the same person
as at other times; she affects me, I can't quite tell you how; it's a
sort of disenchantment to talk to her immediately afterwards.'

Wilfrid liked Mrs. Baxendale the more, the more he talked with her; in a
day or two the confidence between them was as complete as if their
acquaintance had been life-long. With her husband, too, he came to be on
an excellent footing. Mr. Baxendale got him into the library when the
ladies retired for the night, and expatiated for hours on the details of
his electoral campaign. At first Wilfrid found the subject tedious, but
the energy and bright intelligence of the man ended by stirring his
interest in a remarkable way. It was new to Wilfrid to be in converse
with such a strenuously practical mind; the element of ambition in him,
of less noble ambition which had had its share in urging him to academic
triumphs, was moved by sympathetic touches; he came to understand the
enthusiasm which possessed the Liberal candidate, began to be concerned
for his success, to feel the stirrings of party spirit. He aided
Baxendale in drawing up certain addresses for circulation, and learned
the difference between literary elegance and the tact which gets at the
ear of the multitude. A vulgar man could not have moved him in this way,
and Baxendale was in truth anything but vulgar. Through his life he had
been, on a small scale, a ruler of men, and had ruled with conspicuous
success, yet he had preserved a native sincerity and wrought under the
guidance of an ideal. Like all men who are worth anything, either in
public or private, he possessed a keen sense of humour, and was too
awake to the ludicrous aspects of charlatanry to fall into the pits it
offered on every band. His misfortune was the difficulty with which he
uttered himself; even when he got over his nervousness, words came to
him only in a rough-and-tumble fashion; he sputtered and fumed and beat
his forehead for phrases, then ended with a hearty laugh at his own
inarticulateness, Something like this was his talk in the library of
nights:

'There's a man called Rapley, an old-clothes dealer--fellow I can't get
hold of. He's hanging midway--what do you call it?--trimming, with an
eye to the best bargain. Invaluable, if only I could get him, but a
scoundrel. Wants pay, you know; do anything for pay; win the election
for me without a doubt, if only I pay him; every blackguard in Dunfield
hand and glove with him. Now pay I won't, ye