Sweet and Twenty (18 page)

“What, pull out and hand it to Alistair on a platter! Where’s your wits, Hudson? This is a man’s game. If we can’t take a little
ad hominem
we ain’t the sort to be in politics in the first place. Far as that goes, I ain’t ashamed of making up
to Marie. You’d be surprised at the chicks dangling after me since I’m into politics. That Miss Ratchett has been telling me a dozen times how she’d love to live in London, and she means with me, make no mistake about that. You ain’t the only one she’s been casting her line at, so don’t think it. Her old man’s rolling in money too. Why, I daresay they’ll all take me for a great fellow, having such a knowing flirt as Lady Marie. Only fancy her wanting to get my letters copied to go bragging to her friends. I daresay she thought no one would believe her if she didn’t show ‘em the letters.”

Hudson had his ears half turned off, and only looked his reproach.

“In the usual way I don’t bother much about the girls, you know,”
Fellows rattled on. “They’re trying to foist young Miss Monteith on me, as you may have noticed. The chicks will all be jealous as green cows.”

“It’s not the chicks will be voting. It’s their fathers and husbands, and if you think any husband relishes the thought of your dangling after his wife behind his back, you’re a maw-worm.”

“Lord, they will be taking me for a wild buck,”
Fellows chuckled, very well pleased with this novel turn to his dull reputation.

“I’m pulling you out of the race. You have to know when you’re finished.”

“No, by God, I ain’t pulling out. I’ve laid down a load of blunt to be an Honorable M.P.—five hundred pounds of it. I’ve worn this old hat for weeks, I’ve as good as promised I’d show Miss Ratchett the town when she comes to London, and I’ve made dozens of promises to my constituents. I can’t let them down.”

“Tony, you’re not going to be the Honorable Member for the riding. You’re going to be the laughingstock of the town if you let Reising print those letters. You’ve lost, and as you are going to be staying here as plain Mr. Fellows, you might as well as least stop the circulation of the pamphlet and save any shred of dignity you can.”

“Ho, dignity! What has that to say to anything? The Prince of Wales himself is pelted with mud when he goes about in London. And he has a mistress too. I ain’t ashamed of doing what the Prince of Wales does. No harm in it. Besides, I never had a thing to do with Lady Marie but write her a few love-letters. If Alistair puts it about that I actually am her lover, I’ll—well, I’ll let the town know what a low Tory he is.”

“You’re withdrawing. I withdraw the party’s support from you, and if you insist on running, you must do so as an Independent. I won’t have the party smeared with this sort of muck. There is nothing to be gained by it.”

This was, of course, only an empty threat. Fellows was so closely allied with the Whig label that even if he could withdraw party support—which he couldn’t do with only one day to get in touch with London—the blame would be attached to the party.

“I’ll run as an Independent then,”
Fellows replied without a moment’s hesitation. “They’ll all be after me when I get to the House, both Whigs and Tories.”

Now how the devil did the dolt twig to that? On the one chance in a million that he might still win his seat, Hudson was forced to conciliate him. He was clearly determined to make a fool of himself and it appeared to be beyond Hudson’s power to prevent it. He took Fellows home and warned him that to save his life he must not leave the abbey, or see anyone there.

“I’ll do just as you say, Matt, and I know we’ll get in. I don’t despair, for you’re a very good manager. Basingstoke told me so.”

Even in the midst of his anger with Tony, Hudson felt a twinge of compassion for him. He wanted this job so very much and had spent such a lot of money to get it that it seemed a shame a fat old lady should be able to snatch it from his hands. And he might not be such a bad member either, for he was so eager for everyone’s adulation that he would work like a dog to get what they wanted.

Hudson drove his curricle to New Moon. He wanted to discuss it with Lillian, He was by no means sure of sympathy from her, but he wanted very much to be with her.

After a careful consideration of her discussion with Mr. Hudson on the trip to the bridge site, Lillian could see nothing else in it than a forerunner to a proposal. She had bungled the matter badly and now was waiting impatiently for a chance to do better. When Mr. Hudson came to New Moon with the express purpose of asking her and no one else to ride out with him, her spirits soared. He was going to offer—she felt it could be no less than an offer—and her Aunt Martha was not less optimistic. She gave her gracious consent to both the drive and the marriage, the former orally, the latter in her heart, eyes, and every rapturous line of her body.

But Lillian knew as soon as they were alone that it was not marriage or any other happy matter to be discussed. She had never seen Mr. Hudson so blue. “What is the matter? Why are you so glum, Mr. Hudson? You ought to be happy. You have as well as got Mr. Fellows elected. Everyone says so.”

“No, I haven’t, Lillian,”
he said in a restrained voice.

“Has something happened today? At the market this morning everyone was crowding around him.”

“Were you there? I didn’t see you.”

“We saw you,”
she said rather shyly. “But you left before you saw us. Has Fellows said something foolish? I wondered at your going after Reising and leaving him all alone.”

“Oh, said! Words are written on air. You can always wiggle out of a spoken statement—pretend you were misunderstood or misquoted or meant something else entirely. He has committed his deathless words to paper this time. And what words!”

“What has he done to upset you so?”

At her sympathetic tone, he reached out and gripped her hand tightly. “He’s sunk himself, the clunch. He has been writing love-letters to a local lady.”

“Really! Can you beat that? I’d have thought him the last man in the world to be so dashing. But that is not so bad. He is a bachelor, after all. It will give him a touch of romance.”

“A
married
lady!”

“Oh dear. Who?”

“No need to name names. But a Tory, of course, to make it worse.”

“You can’t trust me, and I wearing my fingers to the bone for the cause?”
she asked.

“Of course I trust you,”
he said with a smile, squeezing her fingers more tightly. “You are the only good thing that has happened to me in this campaign. But I wish you will not mention her name to the others, for there’s a chance it will not come out. It’s Lady Marie Sinclair—Sir John’s wife. That awful-looking woman with the yellow curls and the shrill voice. And Basingstoke’s flirt into the bargain.”

“How incriminating are the letters?”

“Fatal—the worst drivel in the world, full of purple passages. Even an attempt at poetry. If she releases those letters, we’re sunk.”

“Surely she wouldn’t. A married lady—she must look to her own reputation.”

“What harm to her that Fellows makes a jackass of himself over her?”

“She didn’t answer his letters at all?”

“Yes—some fine incriminating stuff, by all accounts—and he burned them. Can you beat his throwing away such useful evidence?”

“I can imagine his not holding on to love-letters with an eye to using them for blackmail, yes, but I expect it is pretty naive of me,”
she answered, but in no censorious way. She was careful to keep her tone light, teasing.

“Why will you always make me look a reptile? I know what you’re going to say—why do I always act like one? You see the sort of people I deal with. And the worst of it is, he never really had a thing to do with her, or even wanted to. It was Basingstoke’s taking a shine to her that put the notion in his head. It stopped at the letters, but who will believe it?”

“It is a pity our candidate has no adultery to be boasted of!”
she proclaimed.

“I didn’t mean that! I meant—oh, you know perfectly well what I meant, and it is unkind of
you
to put the boots to me when I’m down. I don’t know where you women get the reputation for being tenderhearted. Hearts of flint, those of you who have one at all.”

“We wouldn’t live long if we had no hearts.”

“Oh, you have pumps in there, something to circulate the blood around. I’m talking about compassion. I doubt one woman in a hundred knows the meaning of the word. Now don’t sulk, Lily. You know I adore squabbling with you, but what are we to do about these letters? The old bit—beast of a lady has given Reising carte blanche to publish them.”

“Your intended epithet was not too harsh. My, how this will set her pride up, to be so singled out by him! He hardly looks at the ladies at all from what I can see. Even Sara, so lovely as she is, is hardly noticed. It is not only skinny sourpusses he holds in aversion. She will be greatly honored to be the only one noticed by him—quite a feather in her cap. A pity it is such a signal honor. When a man flirts with everyone, you know—not that
I
name names either—there is no special glory in having attached him; but this is something quite else.”

“On behalf of all nameless curs everywhere I thank you for your reticence.”
He sat silent, thinking; then a slow, sneaky smile spread over his face. “But who says it was a signal honor? He has written such letters to dozens of girls.”

“Has he indeed? Who else says so? Oh, there is no hope of keeping it silent in that case.”

“No one else has said so, but they will, in droves.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean to increase the numbers of such epistles of his to such an absurd degree that she won’t dare to breathe a word about hers. Every barmaid and milkmaid and lady’s maid and lady of pleasure in the whole damned neighborhood will have had a similar letter from him—if only I can remember the words. If Lady Marie wishes to place herself on the level of her employees, and Leaky Peg at the Cat’s Paw, and the acknowledged prostitutes in the town, I’ll be greatly surprised.”

“What are you talking about? He cannot have written so many.”

“He will have—predated—and when I show Reising the batch of letters I’ve collected, Lady Marie will no more let him publish her own than she’ll quit bleaching her hair.”

“You can’t do that! What a complete and utter fool he will look.”

“He looks that anyway, so we have nothing to lose. It’s a last, desperate gamble, but it might prevent them from publishing.”

“You can’t go using girls’
names in that way. It’s not fair.”

“I’ll butter ‘em up with charm and the old
sine qua non’s
if they prove to be as hardhearted as yourself. What does Leaky Peg care if her name is linked with Tony’s? She’s not fussy. As far as that goes, I mean to do no more than wave the pile of letters under Reising’s nose. Old Lady Bitch is running the show; if she tells him not to publish, he won’t dare to do it. Anyway, what have we got to lose?”

“Mr. Hudson, you’re a genius—an evil genius. I called you a Machiavelli, but that poor Italian innocent lamb wouldn’t stand a chance against you.”

“Fight fire with fire. It was you gave me the idea again, and I like it prodigiously. I’ve got to get busy and set Tony to penning up a batch of letters. I don’t suppose you—no, the handwriting at least had better be authentic, since the date will not. Now how will I induce him to do it?”

She furrowed her brow in concentration. “Would it be possible to convince him of the truth?”

“No, he’d want to write his letters to you and Sara and Miss Ratchett, and the whole point of it is to make the crew as disreputable as possible. You are smiling—I suppose you like the idea of including Miss Ratchett well enough.”

“Oh no, it is always you who wants to be including Miss Ratchett in everything.”

“Not everything! I am formulating some plans from which she is excluded entirely, but I shouldn’t be. I should be devising a way to get Tony to write these letters. Well, I’ll tell him the gentry are wise enough to recognize his worth, but the ragtag and bobtail are so jealous that his only chance of getting elected is to write to their women. He’s pretty humble at the moment, and if I get to him right away I may wheedle him into it. We’re not done yet, Lil.”

“Lil?
This goes from bad to worse.”

“Lillian, Lily—what name do you like?”

“My name is Miss Watters,”
she pointed out.

“No, I don’t like that name at all. I think we should change it, don’t you?”
he asked with a smile.

“Not to Lil, if you please.”

“That wasn’t the change I had in mind. We’ll fight it out later. Meanwhile, thank you once again for your help. Does this mean you have overcome your aversion to my sordid way of life, as you are again contributing to my little peccadilloes with your sage counsel?”

“Little
peccadilloes!”

“You are quite right to point out the redundancy. A peccadillo is a little thing, a trifling sort of a fault.”

“At least you acknowledge bribery and blackmail to be faults. I half expected you would transform them into virtues.”

“No, no, I acknowledge those little blemishes on my otherwise praiseworthy character. No one is perfect. And I still say you deserve credit for the idea.”

“It wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years.”

“You inspire me to evil genius and to all sorts of other evil thoughts. I had better take you home before you inspire me to action.”

“Mr. Hudson, I wish you will behave.”

“No, you don’t,”
he laughed. “You’ve shown your true colors, milady. I won’t have time to come by tonight. I have to visit the local ladies of pleasure, Leaky Peg et al. You can see I mean to pass a decorous evening, but it’s all politics. And of course I shall get Tony to his desk and pay a call on Reising. How I look forward to that!”

“Will it work?”
she asked with more eagerness than disapproval.

“Who knows? We can but try. Well, here we are home. Do you mind if I don’t see you to the door? I have the devil of a lot to do, and I don’t think Aunt Martha is peeking through the curtains. She would not have expected us back so soon.”