Gambier’s Advocate

The ugly town of Gateside was in turmoil. It was noon of the day after a byelection, the poll had just been declared, and the jubilance of the uproar came from the partisans of the defeated candidate.

Two general elections and this byelection within twenty-one months had brought down the Enemy’s historic majority of three thousand odd to an exiguous fifteen, and he who had but just missed being the Joshua of this grimy Jericho was a new man.

Stephen Gambier, Esquire, of the Inner Temple, with a large and growing practice which he owed to a little luck and a great deal of merit, was more pleased with the measure of his defeat than his mild and respectable opponent with the fact of his victory—a victory likely, between the policy of his leaders and his mediocrity, to be his last. For Gambier, by glorious failure, had leaped to a place in his party. In Gateside itself, it was freely acknowledged, even by the Enemy, that the reelected member, despite Dave Jordan’s financial eccentricities and the disruptive schemes of his colleagues and masters, would, with a less brilliant opponent, have retained at least a respectable five hundred of his former majority.

So it was the defeated candidate they listened to; it was the defeated candidate they would have carried round their dirty town if they could have got at him; it was the defeated candidate who told them triumphantly that he was not going to wait for another election to come to them again and tell them once more their duty to their country; “For in all the hours I have spent in talking to you,” he said in conclusion, “I have never told you of what I or the party to which I belong would do for you in the day of power; I have told you only what we will do, not for a class, not for a section, not for a locality nor a sect, but for the whole nation—the whole Empire.”

The cheers were of terrific volume and good quality. But, as they ended with a clean stop indicating hope of more Gambier wisdom, there came a voice crying: “To hell with the Empire!—”