Child, is thy father dead?
Father is gone.
Why did they tax his bread?
God’s will be done!
And as there were enthusiasts on this side, too, who saw the work of the Corn Laws in the thin cheeks of children and the coffins of babes, the claims of John Barley-corn, roared from the windows of the Portcullis and the Packhorse, did not seem a convincing answer. A big loaf and a little loaf, carried high through the streets, made a wide appeal to non-voters; and a banner with, “You be taxing, we be starving!” had its success. Then, on the evening of the market-day, a band of Hatton’s men, fresh from the Three Tailors, came to blows with a market-peart farmer, and a “hand” was not only knocked down, but locked up. Hatton’s and Banfield’s men were fired with indignation at this injustice, and Hatton himself said a little more at the Institute than Basset thought prudent.
These things had their effect, and more, perhaps, than was expected. For Stubbs, going back to his office one afternoon, suffered an unpleasant shock. Bosham’s impudence had not moved him, nor the jeers of Hatton’s men. But this turned out to be another matter. Farthingale, the shabby clerk with the high-bred nose, had news for him which he kept until the office door was locked. And the news was so bad that Stubbs stood aghast.
“What? All nine?” he cried. “Impossible, man! The woman’s made a fool of you!”
But Farthingale merely looked at him over his steel-rimmed spectacles. “It’s true,” he said.
“I’ll never believe it!” cried the lawyer.
Farthingale shook his head. “That won’t alter it,” he said patiently. “It’s true.”
“Dyas the butcher! Why, he served me for years! For years! I go to him at times now.”
“Only for veal,” replied the clerk, who knew everything “Pitt, of the sausage shop, and Badger, the tripeman, are in his pocket — buy his offal. With the other six, it’s mainly the big loaf — Lake has a sister with seven children, and Thomas a father in the almshouse. Two more have big families, and the women have got hold of them!”
“But they’ve always voted right!” Stubbs urged, with a sinking heart. “What’s taken them?”
“If you ask me,” the clerk answered, “I should say it was partly Squire Basset — he talks straight and it takes. And partly the split. When a party splits you can’t expect to keep all. I doubted Dyas from the first. He’s the head. They were all at his house last night and a prime supper he gave them.”
Stubbs groaned. At last, “How much?” he asked.
Farthingale shook his head. “Nix,” he said. “You may be shaking Dyas’s hand and find it’s Hatton’s. If you take my advice, you’ll leave it alone.”
“Well,” the lawyer cried, “of all the d — d ingratitude I ever heard of! The money Dyas has had from me!”
Farthingale’s lips framed the words “only veal,” but no sound came. Devoted as he was to his employer, he was enjoying himself. Election times were meat and drink — especially drink — to him. At such times his normal wage was royally swollen by Election extras, such as: “To addressing one hundred circulars, one guinea. To folding and closing the same, half a guinea. To watering the same, half a guinea. To posting the same, half a guinea.” A whole year’s score, chalked up behind the door at the Portcullis, vanished as by magic at this season.
And then he loved the importance of it, and the secrecy, and the confidence that was placed in him and might safely be placed. The shabby clerk who had greased many a palm was himself above bribes.
But Stubbs was aghast. Scarcely could he keep panic at bay. He had staked his reputation for sagacity on the result. He had made himself answerable for success, to his lordship, to the candidate, to the party. Not once, but twice, he had declared in secret council that defeat was impossible — impossible! Had he not done so, the contest, which his own side had invited, might have been avoided.
And then, too, his heart was in the matter. He honestly believed that these poor creatures, these weaklings whose defection might cost so much, were voting for the ruin of their children, for the impoverishment of the town. They would live to see the land pass into the hands of men who would live on it, not by it. They would live to see the farmers bankrupt, the country undersold, the town a desert!
The lawyer had counted on a safe majority of twenty-two on a register of a hundred and ninety voters. And twenty-two had seemed a buckler, sufficient against all the shafts and all the spite of fortune. But a majority of four — for that was all that remained if these nine went over — a majority of four was a thing to pale the cheek. Perspiration stood on his brow as he thought of it. His hand shook as he shuffled the papers on his desk, looking for he knew not what. For a moment he could not face even Farthingale, he could not command his eye or his voice.
At last, “Who could get at Dyas?” he muttered.
Farthingale pondered for a time, but shook his head. “No one,” he said. “You might try Hayward if you like. They deal.”
“What’s to be done, then?”
“There’s only one way that I can think of,” the clerk replied, his eyes on his master’s face. “Rattle them! Set the farmers on them! Show them that what they’re doing will be taken ill. Show ‘em we’re in earnest. Badger’s a poor creature and Thomas’s wife’s never off the twitter. I’d try it, if I were you. You’d pull some back.”
They talked for a time in low voices and before he went into the Portcullis that night Farthingale ordered a gig to be ready at daylight.
It might have been thought that with this unexpected gain, Basset would be in clover. But he, too, had his troubles and vexations. John Audley’s death and Mary’s loneliness had made drafts on his time as well as on his heart. For a week he had almost withdrawn from the contest, and when he returned to it it was to find that the extreme men — as is the way of extreme men — had been active. In his address and in his speeches he had declared himself a follower of Peel. He had posed as ready to take off the corn-tax to meet an emergency, but not as convinced that free trade was always and everywhere right. He had striven to keep the question of Irish famine to the front, and had constantly stated that that which moved his mind was the impossibility of taxing food in one part of the country while starvation reigned in another. Above all, he had tried to convey to his hearers his notion of Peel. He had pictured the statesman’s dilemma as facts began to coerce him. He had showed that in the same position many would have preferred party to country and consistency to patriotism. He had painted the struggle which had taken place in the proud man’s mind. He had praised the decision to which Peel had come, to sacrifice his name, his credit, and his popularity to his country’s good.
But when Basset returned to his Committee Room, he found that the men to whom Free Trade was the whole truth, and to whom nothing else was the truth, had stolen a march on him. They had said much which he would not have said. They had set up Cobden where he had set up Peel. To crown all, they had arranged an open-air meeting, and invited a man from Lancashire — whose name was a red rag to the Tories — to speak at it.
Basset was angry, but he could do nothing. He had an equal distaste for the man and the meeting, but his supporters, elated by their prospects, were neither to coax nor hold. For a few hours he thought of retiring. But to do so at the eleventh hour would not only expose him to obloquy and injure the cause, but it would condemn him to an inaction from which he shrank.
For all that he had seen of Mary, and all that he had done for her, had left him only the more restless and more unhappy. To one in such a mood success, which began to seem possible, promised something — a new sphere, new interests, new friends. In the hurly-burly of the House and amid the press of business, the wound that pained him would heal more quickly than in the retirement of Blore; where the evenings would be long and lonely, and many a time Mary’s image would sit beside his fire and regret would gnaw at his heart.
The open-air meeting was to be held at the Maypole, in the wide street
bordered by quaint cottages, that served the town for a cattle-market. The day turned out to be mild for the season, the meeting was a novelty, and a few minutes before three the Committee began to assemble in strength at the Institute, which stood no more than a hundred yards from the Maypole, but in another street. Hatton was entertaining Brierly, the speaker from Lancashire, and in making him known to the candidate, betrayed a little too plainly that he thought that he had scored a point.
“You’ll see something new now, sir,” he said, rubbing his hands. “What’s wanting, he’ll win! He’s addressed as many as four thousand persons at one time, Mr. Brierly has!”
“Ay, and not such as are here, Squire,” Brierly boomed. He was a tall, bulky man with an immense chin, who moved his whole body when he turned his head. “Not country clods, but Lancashire men! No throwing dust i’ their eyes!”
“Still, I hope you’ll deal with us gently,” Basset said. “Strong meat, Mr. Brierly, is not for babes. We must walk before we can run.”
“Nay, but the emptier the stomach, the more need o’ meat!” Brierly replied, and he rumbled with laughter. “An’ a bellyful I’ll give them! Truth’s truth and I’m no liar!”
“But to different minds the same words do not convey the same thing,” Basset urged.
The man stared over his stiff neck-cloth. “That’ud not go down i’ Todmorden,” he said. “Nor i’ Burnley nor i’ Bolton! We’re down-right chaps up North, and none for chopping words. Hands off the hands’ loaf, is Lancashire gospel, and we’re out to preach it! We’re out to preach it, and them that clems folk and fats pheasants may make what mouth o’er it they like!”
Fortunately the order to start came at this moment, and Basset had to fall in and move forward with Hatton, the chairman of the day. Banfield followed with the stranger, and the rest of the Committee came on two by two, the smaller men enjoying the company in which they found themselves. So they marched solemnly into the street, a score of Hatton’s men forming a guard of honor, and a long tail of the riff-raff of the town falling in behind with orange flags and favors. These at a certain signal set up a shrill cheer, a band struck up “See, the Conquering Hero Comes!” and the sixteen gentlemen marched, some proudly and some shamefacedly, into the wider street, wherein a cart drawn up at the foot of the Maypole awaited them.
On such occasions Englishmen out of uniform do not show well. The daylight streamed without pity on the Committee as they stalked or shambled along in their Sunday clothes, and Basset at least felt the absurdity of the position. With the tail of his eye he discerned that the stranger was taking off a large white hat, alternately to the right and left, in acknowledgment of the cheers of the crowd, while ominous sniggers of laughter mingled here and there with the applause. Banfield’s men, with another hundred or so of the town idlers, were gathered about the cart, but of the honest and intelligent voters there were scanty signs.
The crowd greeted the appearance of each of the principals with cheers and a shaft or two of Stafford wit.
“Hooray! Hooray!” shouted Hatton’s men as he climbed into the cart.
“Hatton’s a great man now!” a bass voice threw in.
“But he’s never lost his taste for tripe!” squeaked a shrill treble. The gibe won roars of laughter, and the back of the chairman’s neck grew crimson.
“Hurrah for Banfield and the poor man’s loaf!” shouted his supporters, as he mounted in his turn.
“It’s little of the crumb he’ll leave the poor man!” squeaked the treble.
It was the candidate’s turn to mount next. “Hooray! Hooray!” shouted the crowd with special fervor. Handkerchiefs were waved from windows, the band played a little more of the Conquering Hero.
As the music ceased, “What’s he doing, Tommy, along o’ these chaps?” asked the treble voice.
“He’s waiting for that there Samaritan, Sammy?” answered the bass.
“Ay, ay? And the wine and oil, Sammy?”
It took the crowd a little time to digest this, but in time they did so, and the gust of laughter that followed covered the appearance of the stranger. He was not to escape, however, for as the noise ceased, “Is this the Samaritan, Sammy?” asked the bass.
“Where’s your eyes?” whined the treble. “He’s the big loaf! and, lor, ain’t he crumby!”
“If I were down there — —” the Burnley man began, leaning over the side of the cart.
“He’s crusty, too!” cried the wit.
But this was too much for the chairman. “Silence! Silence!” he cried, and, as at a signal, there was a rush, the two interrupters were seized and, surrounded by a gang of hobbledehoys, were hustled down the road, fighting furiously and shouting, “Blues! Blues!”
The chairman made use of the lull to step to the edge of the cart and take off his hat. He looked about him, pompous and important.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “free and independent electors of our ancient borough! At a crisis such as this, a crisis the most momentous — the most momentous — —” he paused and looked into his hat, “that history has known, when the very staff of life is, one may say, the apple of discord, it is an honor to me to take the chair!”
“The cart you mean!” cried a voice, “you’re in the cart!”
The speaker cast a withering glance in the direction whence the voice came, lost his place and, failing to find it, went on in a different strain. “I’m a business man,” he said, “you all know that! I’m a business man, and I’m not ashamed of it. I stick to my business and my business to-day — —”
“Better go on with it!”
But he was getting set, and he was not to be abashed. “My business to-day,” he repeated, “is to ask your attention for the distinguished candidate who seeks your suffrages, and for the — the distinguished gentleman on my left who will presently follow me.”
A hollow groan checked him at this point, but he recovered himself. “First, however,” he continued, “I propose, with your permission, to say a word on the — the great question of the day — if I may call it so. It is to the food of the people I refer!”
He paused for cheers, under cover of which Banfield murmured to his neighbor that Hatton was set now for half an hour. He had yet to learn that open-air meetings have their advantages.
“The food of the people!” Hatton repeated, uplifted by the applause. “It is to me a sacred thing! My friends, it is to me the Ark of the Covenant. The bread is the life. It should go straight, untaxed, untouched from the field of the farmer to the house of — of the widow and the orphan!”
“Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear!” Then, “What about the miller?”
“It should go from where it is grown,” Hatton repeated, “to where it is needed; from where it is grown to the homes of the poor! And to the man,” slipping easily and fatally into his Sunday vein, “that lays his ‘and upon it, let him be whom he may, I say with the Book, ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn!’ The Law, ay, and the Prophets — —”
“Ay, Hatton’s profits! Hands off them!” roared the bass voice.
“Low bread and high profits!” shrieked the treble. “Hatton and thirty per cent!”
A gust of laughter swept all away for a time, and when the speaker could again get a hearing he had lost his thread and his temper. “That’s a low insinuation!” he cried, crimson in the face. “A low insinuation! I scorn to answer it!”
“Regular old Puseyite you be,” shouted a new tormentor. “Quoting Scripture.”
Hatton shook his fist at the crowd. “A low, dirty insinuation!” he cried. “I scorn — —”
“You don’t scorn the profits!”
“Listen! Silence!” Then, “I shall not say another word! You’re not worth it! You’re below it! I call on Mr. Brierly of Manchester to propose a resolution.”
And casting vengeful glances here and there where he fancied he detected an opponent, he stood back. He began for the first time to think the meeting a mistake. Basset, who had held t
hat opinion from the first, scanned the crowd and had his misgivings.
The man from Manchester, however, had none. He stood forward, a smile on his broad face, his chest thrown forward, a something easy in his air, as became one who had confronted thousands and was not to be put out of countenance by a few hisses. He waited good-humoredly for silence. Nor could he see that, behind the cart, there had been gathering for some time a band of men of a different air from those who faced the platform. These men were still coming up by twos and threes, issuing from side-streets; men clad in homespun and with ruddy faces, men in smocked frocks, men in velveteens; a few with belcher neckerchiefs and slouched felts, whom their mothers would not have known. When Brierly raised his hand and opened his mouth there were over two score of these men — and they were still coming up.
But Brierly was unaware of them, and, complacent and confident of the effect he would produce, he opened his mouth.
“Gentlemen,” he began. His voice, strong and musical, reached the edge of the meeting. “Gentlemen, free electors! And I tell you straight no man is free, no man had ought to be free — —”
Boom! and again, Boom! Boom! Not four paces behind him a drum rolled heavily, drowning his voice. He stopped, his mouth open; for an instant surprise held the crowd also. Then laughter swept the meeting and supplied a treble to the drum’s persistent bass.
And still the drum went on, Boom! Boom! amid cheers, yells, laughter. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. More slowly, the hurrahs, yells, laughter, died down, the laughter the last to fail, for not only had the big man’s face of surprise tickled the crowd, but the drum had so nicely taken the pitch of his voice that the interruption seemed even to his friends a joke.
He seized the opportunity, but defiance not complacency was now his note. “Gentlemen,” he said, “it’s funny, but you don’t drum me down, let me tell you! You don’t drum me down! What I said I’m going to say again, and shame the devil and the landlords! Free men — —”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 606
