Reuben felt his heart sink, and his beer nearly choked him. Soon a vast struggle was raging round the hustings, as the voters fought their way through fists and sticks, often emergingespecially the Conservativeswith their clothes half torn off their backs and quite ruined by garbage. The special constables were useless, for their own feelings betrayed them, and unluckily even in their ranks the Radicals predominated. The[Pg 183] state of the poll at ten-thirty was twenty-seven for Captain MacKinnon and only eleven for Colonel MacDonald.Reuben was now alone at Odiamfor the first time. Of course Harry was with him still, but Harry did not count. There was an extraordinary vitality in him, none the less; it was as if the energies unused by his brain were diverted to keep together his crumbled body. He grew more shrivelled, more ape-like every day, and yet he persisted in life. He still scraped at his fiddle, and would often sit for hours at a time mumbling"Only a poor old mana poor old manold manold man," over and over again, sometimes with a[Pg 413] sudden shrill cry of "Salvation's got me!" or "Another wedding!we're always having weddings in this house." His brother avoided him, and did his best to ignore himhe was the scar of an old wound.
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He had shrunk into the rattling shelter of some thorn-bushes. They scraped their boughs like grotesque violins, and every other moment they would sweep down over him and shut him into a cavern of snapping twigs. He was soaked to the skin and his teeth chattered. He lay close to the earth, seeking shelter even from the skeleton heather which writhed woody stems all round him. He cursed. Must he spend the night here, lost and grovelling, to listen while Boarzell screeched its triumph over his cold, drenched body....He looked forward to William coming back and settling down at Odiam. It would be good to have companionship again. The end of the war was in sightonly a guerilla campaign was being waged among[Pg 426] the kopjes, Kruger had fled from Pretoria, and everyone talked of Peace.
