Sweet and Twenty (4 page)

She gave him a commiserating smile that implied she understood his predicament in trying to get a man of such small understanding elected. “How does it come Mr. Fellows was chosen to run?”
she asked.

“It was Lord Allingham’s suggestion. He is influential in
these parts. They had difficulty in getting a local man to run, for the riding has been Tory for years. We didn’t like to waste a good man—that is, a man who might have a better chance of winning a seat elsewhere, a man who is a little known nationally. Fellows is a good man. We feel ourselves fortunate that he agreed to stand.”

Lillian regarded him closely but could see no irony or humor in his foolish statement. She deduced that Mr. Hudson was either a humbug or a fool, although he did not speak like a fool. “A good deal must depend on Mr. Alistair. If he is a strong candidate, you will have a hard task on your hands.”

“Yes, I’m eager to meet Mr. Alistair.”

The ladies retired to the saloon and the gentlemen soon joined them. On this occasion Mr. Hudson sought out a seat beside Miss Watters. She had been waiting with some eagerness to see where he chose to place himself, and was aware of a slight flutter in her breast when he came toward her without even a glance at Sara. She was soon enlightened as to the unflattering nature of his attention: he wished to ask her to address a batch of envelopes for him and to send out some circulars he was having printed up outlining Mr. Fellows’
imaginary qualities as a good Member of Parliament. She was not entirely displeased with him, however, when he said with a warm smile that he looked forward to the pleasure of delivering the material in person and learning more from her of conditions in the West Riding.

The matter settled, they both turned to hear Mr. Fellows expounding to Sara his views of the repressive and reactionary Tories.

“What do they repress?”
she asked, batting her long lashes at him.

“Everything,”
he answered comprehensively.

“Dear me, that is very bad of them,”
she said. “And what do they react against?”

“Us Whigs, mostly,”
he told her with a knowing smile.

“Fancy that nice Mr. Alistair being such a reactor. I wouldn’t have expected it of him.”

“He is of very good family and an excellent man in other ways. But they sent him off to Cambridge, you know. He was never at Oxford at all, and very likely that’s why he became a Tory.”

“Papa was used to say he’d make some girl a fine husband, and I think he meant me. But of course Papa was a Tory himself. He called Lord Allingham ‘a dashed Whig aristocrat.’
He always reacted against everything too, my papa—kittens and cream buns and going to the village. I wish he had been a Whig.”

“He would have, had he lived, Miss Monteith, depend on it. Well, very likely he has become one in heaven, for you may be sure there are no Tories there. Basingstoke was saying only t’other day a Tory is a Whig who has not yet seen the light, and if your papa had lived to see the light he would have become a Whig, as I did, and as I mean to see the whole riding do.”

“What riding?”

“Our riding!”
he answered.

“Oh.”
In her head she pictured a bunch of horsemen riding along, and frowned.

They continued to converse in this manner for fifteen minutes, each gaining a very good idea of the other’s limitations. For his part, Mr. Hudson felt his heart sink when he saw what a paucity of material he had to make look wise and sensible.

* * * *

The elderly ladies, especially Miss Monteith, were happy to see Sara get on so famously with Mr. Fellows, and thought it as good as a proposal when he said he would come with Mr. Hudson tomorrow to deliver the envelopes for addressing.

“And to plan the timing of our tea party,”
Martha
added, for this had been one of the major subjects of
discussion after dinner. The tea party was to start a wave that would wash Mr. Fellows into power.

“Yes, by Jove, I do
like a tea party,”
Mr. Fellows said. “And with so many ladies present it will be a decorous do. That will please you, Mr. Hudson. No
ad hominem
tactics before the ladies, what?”

“Ad mulierem,
perhaps,”
Mr. Hudson answered, but received only a blank stare from all his listeners. “It seems an excellent idea,”
he said, and thought to himself, another afternoon wasted. But no date had been set and he’d get out of it if better things to do occurred to him.

In the carriage, on the way home, Aunt Martha ruled the conversation. “Really, I find Mr. Fellows most conversable. A very nice gentleman. And Mr. Hudson too seems to have proper ideas. His gray hair gives him a dignified appearance. He will handle this campaign with propriety; I’m glad to see he has no ideas of blackening his opponent’s character or any low tricks of that sort. Indeed they are two fine gentlemen, and if you didn’t have Mr. Thorstein on the string, Lillian, I should make a push to attract Mr. Hudson for
you.
But then we actually know nothing, of him. A well-cut jacket and a pleasing smile tell nothing.”

They told Miss Watters, however, that she found Mr. Hudson a good deal more interesting than the portly Mr. Thorstein, and she looked forward to seeing him the next morning.

Receiving no affirmation of her opinion, Martha went on to make sure Lillian understood her. “Between Mr. Hudson and Mr. Fellows there is no question of superiority. Mr. Fellows is the better man in every way.”

Aunt Martha, of course, knew better than this, but for purposes of conversation and marriage she subscribed to a mysterious theory by which rich ladies became automatically accomplished and pretty, rich gentlemen well-bred, and titled ones distinguished. Mr. Fellows, with a fortune and an abbey at his back, had taken a leap to conversability. Mr. Hudson, on the other hand, though he had the noble mien of a duke or a judge, wit and intelligence to spare, and manners, had no known worldly goods but the coat on his back, and she soon began discerning a touch of something “low”
about him. She would not be more specific, but his being sent to Crockett as a clerk and errand boy for Mr. Fellows—as she conceived his duties
—had definitely given him a low air that no manners or tailoring or gray hair could quite conceal. It would take a fortune at least to remove that trace of lowness.

Having wasted a whole precious evening with four unenfranchised ladies, Mr. Hudson was eager to get on with the campaign in the morning. As soon as breakfast was over, he suggested riding over to Lord Allingham’s place for a discussion, and Mr. Fellows was all compliance. There was little he would rather do than visit a lord.

“We’ll take along the envelopes for the ladies to address, as we’ll be passing by New Moon,”
he said.

“Yes, we’ll drop them off along the way to save time,”
Hudson agreed.

It saved no time, as they were invited in for a cup of coffee, which Mr. Hudson was forced to accept when Fellows expressed so much eagerness. He hoped to spend the time in discovering something of local issues, but the Monteith ladies who lived at Crockett were strangely uninformed. They both welcomed the idea of a bridge, but on other matters they appeared totally ignorant. The other visitors, with obviously a keener interest, were only visitors, and of such short standing that they could tell him nothing. Mr. Hudson fielded questions as to the preferred time for the tea party without being pinned down, and in half an hour got his candidate out the door. Allingham was only slightly interested in the election.

“Crockett never elected a Whig and never will,”
he told Hudson bluntly, when they had sent Fellows over to the window to peruse some Whig doctrine. “If we had had a top-notch candidate we might have made a decent showing, but no one wants to run here. We have no hope of getting our man in, so we are running Fellows. He has been having some doings with Basingstoke lately; it was Basingstoke’s idea to have him stand. He is well inlaid and can bear the expense. He will like the consequence of running.”

“It won’t add much to his consequence if he gets no more than a handful of votes. You give up too easily, Allingham. Fellows makes the right appearance; he is a good-looking man and a bachelor. I know of nothing against him. I hope I am not down here on a fool’s errand.”

“I was surprised to hear it was you who was coming. I should have thought Brougham would have more useful work for his party whip. Wasting your time here.”

“Things are quiet in London at the moment. My orders were to get him in, and I have been given a full purse to do it—no holds barred. Can I count on your help, and Basingstoke’s?”

“Be happy to do what we can, both of us. I wouldn’t count too heavily on Basingstoke, though. Not a bright chap. Not bright.”

“Not squeamish, I hope?”

“He does pretty well what I tell him.”

“Good. Now fill me in on the local issues.”

“Just what you’d expect in a farming community—the price of grain, of course. With the farmers all for the Corn Laws, a Whig has no chance, no chance at all.”

“Crockett seems a thriving community. The merchants with a vote must nearly equal the farmers; I saw a few small manufactories on the way here. A tanning factory, and as far as that goes, the farmers don’t all grow grain. The Corn Laws are no benefit to those who grow other foods. The livestock growers, for instance, can’t relish the high cost of grain.”

“There’s only a handful of them, not enough to counterbalance the corn vote. They like to have their member be of the party in power, too. An opposition member can do little for them.”

“I keep hearing something about a bridge to Chepstow. What exactly is the score on that?”

“There used to be one ten years ago and it was washed away and never replaced. The government keeps promising us one—every election the promise is renewed and never kept. Well, they know they have this riding sewed up, don’t worry about it. It would be a very good thing for the townspeople and the farmers, too, to get to their northern market.”

“Tories aren’t the only ones who can build bridges.”

“They control the purse. I hope you don’t expect us to pay for a bridge out of our own pockets. It would cost thousands, and the place would still go Tory.”

“Would you care to make a small wager, milord?”

“Yes, by God, or better, a large one.”

“Shall we say five hundred pounds?”

“Clap hands on a bargain!”
Lord Allingham said.

There was nothing further to be gained from a colleague who considered the
election lost before the campaign was begun, so Hudson herded his man back to the village, there to go into every shop and make a purchase in order to gain an introduction to the voters. He contrived to make himself agreeable by praising their stores, their wares, their village, their wives and daughters and anything else that belonged to them. He soon became aware that Mr. Fellows was not warmly greeted anywhere. He was only dimly recognized and kept at a respectful distance.

“Be a little friendlier if you can, Mr. Fellows,”
he advised.

“It don’t do to be too friendly with Cits,”
the man answered. “They will expect to be first-naming me and eating at my table if I start that. If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.”

“They had better be first-naming you and eating at your table if you wish to win this election, and never mind the fleas. I shall call you Tony to give them the lead. You might as well call me Matt, as we are to live in each other’s pocket the next month. Now, we are going into this shop here—what is it? A greengrocer—for God’s sake buy something.”

“Meadows doesn’t keep a thing in his shop worth buying. Withered turnips, wilted cabbages and sprouting onions, all at a huge price.”

“The best wilted vegetables you have ever seen, Tony. Buy a bushel of each, and don’t haggle about the price.”

“I have my root cellar full of better stuff than he sells.”

“These are for distribution to the needy. Open up that fat purse of yours, if you want to be the Honorable Anthony Fellows, M.P.”
The lately deceased incumbent of the riding, the Rt. Honorable. James Farrington, owed his Honorable to being a Member of the Privy Council, but this detail did not bother Fellows, nor did it bother Hudson much to throw in this unearned perquisite.

A title before his name and letters after it—just like a lord or a university graduate, or both rolled into one inestimable whole. “By Jove,”
said Fellows, smiling, “I’ll do it. Money, eh, Matt? The old
sine qua non’s,
as you mentioned t’other day.”

“That’s the dandy, Tony, and
caveat emptor.”

“Eh?”

“Let the buyer beware. I mean, don’t say anything to offend Mr. Meadows, but the phrase
usually
means . . .”
He went on with a little free lesson in Latin for the scholar
manqué.

They bought a great many items at the greengrocer’s shop and others, and then went along to the Cat’s Paw Inn for lunch and a chat with the proprietor, who had to be introduced to the candidate! At the rather disappointing meal’s conclusion, Hudson pushed Tony forward to express his delight to the owner and his intention of returning again very soon.

There was an open stall market in progress, and Hudson walked his candidate along to it, bowing and smiling to everyone they had met that morning and trying to get Tony to do the same. He saw that Mr. Reising, whom the Tories had sent down to get their man in, had beat him to it. The well-set-up young gentleman with him, he assumed, was Alistair. He looked five or six years younger than Tony and nineteen or twenty times as bright. He too was a local citizen, and obviously on the best of terms with everyone. It took a great deal of back-slapping and handshaking on Hudson’s part—he a stranger—to give any show at all of Tony’s being popular.

He was very happy indeed to see the ladies from New Moon across the way. They had been watching him, a little surprised to see him so much at home in the community he had come to just the day before. His distinguished appearance, heightened by his well-cut jacket and gray hair, stood out in the motley crowd of country folks.

“He gives a good impression, does he not?”
Lillian asked her cousin.