It was pandemonium. Bands of
music, one shriller and more discordant than the next, marched up and
down the main streets--from the fifes and drums of the Fire Brigade, to
the kerosene-tins and penny-whistles of mere determined noise-makers.
Straggling processions, with banners that bore the distorted features of
one or other of the candidates, made driving difficult; and, to add to
the confusion, the schoolchildren were let loose, to overrun the place
and fly advertisement balloons round every corner.--And so it went on
till far into the night, the dark hours being varied by torchlight
processions, fireworks, free fights and orgies of drunkenness.
The results of the polling were promised for two o'clock the following
day.
When, something after this hour Mahony reached home, he found Polly and
the gentle, ox-eyed Jinny Beamish, who was the present occupant of the
spare room, pacing up and down before the house. According to Jerry news
might be expected now at any minute. And when he had lunched and changed
his coat, Mahony, bitten by the general excitement, made his way down to
the junction of Sturt Street and the Flat.
A great crowd blocked the approaches to the hustings. Here were the four
candidates, who, in attending the issue, strove to look decently
unconcerned. John had struck a quasi-Napoleonic attitude: his right
elbow propped in the cup of his left hand, he held his drooped chin
between thumb and forefinger, leaving it to his glancing black eyes to
reveal how entirely alive he was to the gravity of the moment.
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