Sweet and Twenty

by Joan Smith

  Early in the morning, after Allingham, Basingstoke, Fellows and Alistair were all abed, the whippers-in met in Hudson’s room to share a bottle of undiluted brandy. Their duties done to the best of their respective abilities, they got their heads together for a very pleasant rehashing of the campaign.

  “They stuck us with a pair of rare boys this time, old friend,” Reising said. “Here’s to ‘em.” They lifted their glasses and drank.

  “Mine was a fool, you know,” Reising confessed.

  “Mine made him appear a wizard,” Hudson replied, glad to be able to say it aloud at last.

  “Aye, there was little enough to choose between them. Yours was an old fool and mine a young one. He’s done nothing but moon about since the pretty young lady took a shine to him. Did you put her up to it then?”

  “No. I’d have preferred she wait till the election was over.”

  “I didn’t know whether to encourage him in it or hold him back, not knowing what you were up to. I doubted she could really be as dumb as she seemed and feared you had some card up your sleeve. And then once Telford came I lost my boy entirely. He jawed my ear off with talk of cantilevers and suspension cables and clearances till I began to think he was running for county engineer instead of M.P.”

  “1 still think you had the best of it. Mine doesn’t know yet whether he’s a Whig or a Tory.”

  “Whatever he is, he’s rich at least. Alistair ain’t, and we had to depend on old Sinclair.”

  “Mine ain’t much poorer than when he started. I’ve seen rocks bleed freer.”

  They congratulated and consoled each other and ran down their candidates for an hour, parting the best of friends.

  “Will I be seeing you in Burridge in two months’ time for the next by-election?” Reising asked. “Our member there is on the point of sticking his fork in the wall. We figure two months till the election.”

  “As it’s another Tory stronghold, you’ll be seeing me there,” Hudson replied.

  “It’s au revoir then,” Reising said, and walked from the room with a fairly steady step.

  Chapter 15

  A public meeting was to take place the next day on the village green, where a dais had been erected. The candidates were to meet and publicly shake hands and declare each other fine fellows. The star of the show was Anthony Fellows Esq., M.P. for Crockett. Hudson had written him a modest victory speech and practiced him up on it before herding him to the green. For this occasion he was allowed to exchange his politicking hat for his own, more becoming, Baxter. The occasion was dignified by formal clothing for those to sit on the dais. Everyone—including the ladies from New Moon—was present at the meeting.

  It was remarkable to see foolish Tony Fellows looking so dignified and intelligent. A well-cut black suit did wonders for him. He spoke the words of his mentor without a hitch or a flaw, thanked everyone for every imaginable thing, and even thanked those who had voted against him for adhering to their principles.

  It had taken quite a few rehearsals to prevent his describing those principles as repressive and reactionary, but at last Hudson had succeeded. Mr. Alistair too made a speech, almost as fine as Tony’s but of less interest to everyone except Sara as he was in no position to do anyone any favors. It was the general opinion that they need not be ashamed to send Mr. Fellows to London to represent them. A very fine, sensible man he had always been, they all agreed, as they didn’t really know him well at all.

  Miss Ratchett measured him through narrowed eyes and decided he would have to do. His abbey lent

  him a certain éclat in the town, and in the city an Honorable Member must surely move in the first circles. In any case, she could not be choosy. There were few gentlemen in Crockett, and Papa refused to take her to London to choose from a wider field.

  Mr. Hudson stayed very much in the background, very dignified himself with his black coat and black hair, ennobled at the temples with the wings of gray. Lillian, always felt she was looking at a judge when she regarded him, and smiled to herself to think of that noble-looking gentleman pulling the barn door off its hinges, scrambling around to bribe Leaky Peg, and bringing in his flash culls to perform any deeds beyond his own considerable powers of criminality.

  There was first a spate of merrymaking on the green, with free food and beverages—the last of the bribes served to everyone—while the band played away in the background. After this general celebration, certain chosen persons were invited to the abbey for a more refined party. Mr. Fellows was vehemently against feeding Tories in his own home, but gentle insistence from all his mentors eventually succeeded in his allowing at least Mr. Alistair and Reising to come. Without Fellows’s knowledge, an invitation was also extended to Sir John and Lady Marie by Allingham, who counted on Sir John’s sense of propriety to stay away, as indeed he did.

  Miss Ratchett succeeded pretty well in monopolizing Mr. Fellows’s attention, for no one else really wanted it. Sara followed Alistair around like a puppy, and Miss Watters was lucky to get a look at Mr. Hudson; he was so busy attending to all the upcoming business for the riding that Mr. Fellows should have been seeing to. He hardly looked at Lillian, and she began to wonder if she had imagined all those intimate glances he had been casting her way, and all the suggestive remarks he had made. She knew he was leaving the next day, yet despite that he disappeared into a study with Allingham several hours. When he came out, he was pulled right into the middle of a group petitioning for federal moneys to set up a hospital.

  It was nearly time for them to leave before she had a minute with him, and Fellows chose that very moment to accost his whipper-in and thank him for lending a hand with the campaign.

  “You did a dashed good job, Matt, and I won’t hesitate to acknowledge to anyone who asks me that without your help I wouldn’t have had such a whopping majority.”

  He had squeaked in with a whopping majority of fifty votes, but in a small riding fifty votes was not subject to recount, and so it was a nominal whopping victory. “I won’t insult my constituents to suggest they wouldn’t have had the sense to elect a Whig, for they would and we all know it, but the fact of the matter is I give you credit for the size of my majority. You are a dashed knowing one; Basingstoke I think will agree with me on that, and if you ever come a cropper, I’ll find a spot for you on my staff. I have young Armstrong, an orphan you know and not fit for real work, to rattle off my letters for me, but there’s always a place for good men like yourself in the party. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you to anyone to give him a hand with his campaign.”

  “Thank you, Tony. I appreciate the recommendation.”

  “No more than the simple truth. I hope I ain’t too proud to allow you was a little help to me. In fact, I’ll drop a word in Brougham’s ear when I get to London, and have him look out for a soft spot for you in the City. At your age you must be fagged to death being an errand boy for us members.”

  “I do begin to find it wearing,” Hudson admitted, and was assured again that Fellows would put in a word for him in the right quarters.

  Lillian had some hopes Mr. Hudson would find time to look for a quiet spot before she left—and in an abbey with fifty rooms. It seemed possible he might succeed. But when it was time for her to go, all she could do was congratulate him on the miracle he had performed.

  “Getting him elected, you mean?”

  “No, not wringing his neck for giving you so little credit.”

  Although he shook her hand with a hard squeeze and said he’d see her tomorrow, her hopes plunged. She had to make do with reading into that single grip of the hand all the tender words she had been anticipating. Never was a handshake considered in such minute detail, and seldom must one have given so little pleasure.

  She didn’t get much more of his company when he and Tony stopped at New Moon the next morning on their way to Devizes. The full quorum of ladies was present—Aunt Martha, Lady Monteith, Sara and Lillian. One day’s congratulations to the incumbent as not enough; he ha
d to be congratulated again and again by them all. He never tired of hearing himself mentioned as the Honorable Member, and to his elation, the ladies repeated it to his heart’s content. Nor did he take it as an offense when Sara, in an excess of reverence, called him Sir Anthony. A milord or a your grace would also have gone down very well, but he could wait till he was knighted for those promotions.

  Much as he enjoyed strutting before the ladies, he could hardly wait to get to London, where he fancied the House must be on tiptoe to meet him, and e’er long he was urging Hudson out the door, calling him “my good man,” and not Matt, now that he was raised to his new office. Matthew expected to be reduced to “Hudson” by the time he got rid of him at Devizes.

  “We must be off,” Fellows said at last. “I have a dozen matters to bring to Brougham’s attention. Can’t waste a minute. Waste not, want not, you know.”

  Hudson looked at Lillian and smiled. “I’ll be returning soon,” he said, her only hint that there was unfinished business between them.

  “Soon? No such thing,” Fellows objected. “Can’t be

  poking back here every two days. The House is in session.”

  “I will be returning,” Hudson said.

  “What the deuce for? I’ll get you a spot, my good man. I told you I’d speak to Brougham.”

  “I really don’t think that will be necessary, Tony, but in any case I’m not going all the way to London just now.”

  “Oh—I see how it is,” Fellows declared in loud, significant tones. “Amor omnia vincit, eh?”

  “Just so,” Hudson agreed quietly.

  “Which reminds me, old chap, we must nip in and say au revoir to the Ratchetts.”

  “Yes, you will want to take your leave of Miss Hatchett,” Hudson said, risking a glance at Miss Watters.

  “Ha ha, I’ve done you out on her, true enough. But I daresay it is my being an M.P. that gives me the preference, for it was pretty warm with you two for a while there.”

  “Perhaps I ought to have a few words with Mr. Ratchett,” Hudson said, and got the M.P. out the door before Lillian quite threw a fit.

  “Well, they’re gone,” Martha said, and everyone looked to her for elaboration, for she was not one to waste words on the obvious.

  “I’m certainly glad it isn’t Mr. Alistair who must go to London,” Sara said with a shiver at the close escape.

  “The two of them got away without a single offer. I hope you can manage to bring Mr. Alistair up to scratch, Sara, for you’ve lost Mr. Fellows,” Martha continued. “That Miss Ratchett will not be so backward when they call on her. And you, Lillian, must get back home and attach Mr. Thorstein. Mr. Hudson won’t be back.”

  “He said he would come back!”

  “They always say they will come back to effect a graceful exit. He won’t be back.”

  “Why should he say so if he doesn’t mean it?” Melanie inquired.

  “Because he didn’t want to make Lillian look a fool and himself a jilt, which is what he is. He’ll drop a note claiming business that has delayed him—the necessity for going on all the way to London or some such thing. Then it will be a postscript on one of Fellows’s letters describing more delays, and that’ll be the end of it. Next thing we’ll hear of that one will be of his engagement to some fine lady. He would have made a fine partie, Cecilford’s heir, but there is some little quirk in him I cannot quite trust. A man who will countenance bribery and trickery as he did is not to be depended on. It is the way of men’s world. Now don’t mope, Lillian. He’s had a dozen chances to offer for you if it was his intention. Haven’t you driven with him twice and been at balls and parties and meetings a dozen times? No, he was amusing himself, and I believe he has left Miss Ratchett with her heart on her sleeve as well, but she will settle for Mr. Fellows, and he is plenty good enough for her too. Too good. We shan’t let you be made a laughingstock by him. Back to Yorkshire, and you’ll be engaged to Mr. Thorstein before we read of Mr. Hudson’s marriage.”

  Martha spoke thus to prepare Lillian for the worst, but actually she had no notion of leaving before the day which should see Mr. Hudson return—with a few days’ grace thrown in on account of his being Cecilford’s heir. If he came back, so much the better; if he didn’t, she had prepared the girl for it. What more could she do? She was hoping as hard as Lillian herself that he would come, and decided to count on it sufficiently to allow her to begin considering alternative brides for Mr. Thorstein. There was Cousin Philmont’s middle daughter, elbowing her way past twenty and no one in sight... she would be a congenial replacement for Lillian. Still, just enough uncertainty clung about Hudson that she didn’t write to Mrs. Philmont yet.

  The next two days passed quickly for three of the four ladies at New Moon. Mr. Alistair came and had private words with Lady Monteith. As well ask a cat or a dog as Lady Monteith what he had said, but when she muttered something about a house his father was giving him, and two thousand pounds a year—or maybe it was two thousand acres—Martha assumed he had asked permission to pay his addresses to Sara, and gave her own permission as soon as he returned.

  The family was later informed in no uncertain terms by her that it was a very fine estate (with two thousand acres, not pounds), and the income was twenty-five hundred a year. The marriage would be before Christmas, and Martha wouldn’t be able to come all the way from Yorkshire for it, so she would take Sara shopping and buy her trousseau for a wedding gift before she left. No furs or feathers, mind, but a half-dozen good, dark, sober matron’s gowns for the youthful bride. She thought privately that it was a pity she couldn’t be in touch with Mr. Thorstein for the acquisition of the woolens.

  Sara’s little mouth turned down, but Lillian whispered to her that Aunt Martha wasn’t such a dragon as she let on, and she could have any color gowns she wanted.

  “It’s feathers I wanted,” she said, a tear trembling in her lucid blue eye.

  “Buy them yourself, goose! They only cost a shilling.”

  This ingenious idea brought back her smiles. “You’re so clever,” she said admiringly. “I hope Mr. Hudson comes back and marries you.”

  “So do I,” Lillian replied, and was surprised at herself for admitting it to a single soul.

  “He’s clever too. My, what a hard time you will have understanding each other.”

  * * * *

  Two days had never seemed so long to Mr. Hudson. Tony Fellows had been hard enough to endure, but a condescending elected Member of Parliament was utterly insupportable. Hudson finally gave him a couple of sharp dressing-downs, after which Fellows addressed him again as Matt. At Devizes, Hudson unloaded the member on to Mr. Henderson with a vast sigh of relief.

  “The election was an upset,” Henderson said. “Very good for party morale. It must have been an interesting campaign.”

  “A regular one,” Hudson answered indifferently.

  “How about our new member?” Fellows had gone to the desk at the inn to make himself known in all his glory, and thus the other gentlemen were free to discuss him.

  “He’ll look well enough on the back bench, as long as we keep his mouth closed.”

  “A dud, is he? Why did they run him? Is he rich?”

  “Fairly, but I had to wrestle him to the ground and squeeze every pound out of him. He has an heiress in his eye, however, whose Papa is much more generous. Name of Ratchett. They’ll come down heavy if it is a match.”

  “I’ll prod him along then.”

  “I’d appreciate it if Brougham would see him for a few minutes. He has the idea they’re to be bosom beaux, and it would be nice if he at least got to shake hands with the boss.”

  “I’ll see to it. We’ll get notices in the Gazette and the Observer. Something about some new kind of a bridge, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, mention that. I’ve already sent in one piece, but the more coverage we can get out of it the better.”

  “No excitement at all in the campaign?”

  “Not much, but there was
an interesting sidelight.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve found myself a wife.”

  “Have you, by God! I hope she’ll make us a good Whig hostess?”

  “She could if she would, but I’m not sure she will.”

  “Much chance she’ll have not to!” Henderson laughed.

  “I’ll take care to keep you away from her. A fine idea she’ll have of me if she hears you talk like that.”

  “Somebody should warn her,” Henderson roasted him, and asked him a few pertinent questions regarding the lady’s background. He was a little surprised to hear that Hudson hadn’t looked higher for a wife than an unknown Miss Watters from Yorkshire, but was naturally too polite to say so and assumed the lady must have some exceptional degree of beauty to have snared the elusive Hudson.

  Chapter 16

  Alistair rapidly became a fixture at New Moon. With all the spare time fallen on his hands since the campaign was over, he didn’t know what to do with himself, and as his reception there was as royal as three delighted ladies could make it, he stayed from morning till dark, with occasional excursions to the Fellows Bridge. Sara was coming to learn that it was a pretty good sort of bridge after all. William had told her all about it, and drawn her a picture that rested in her treasure box with her pamphlet from the campaign as testimonials to William’s worth.