Sweet and Twenty (9 page)

“He hasn’t quite got the knack of praise yet. He thinks he may run things down as much as he likes, as long as he prefaces it with a compliment first.”

“You have got yourself an admirable candidate—an excellent man. It’s a pity he has neither wit nor principles.”

His lips twitched. “I
will
buy you a mustache and a pair of trousers one of these days. Your brains are wasted in a lady’s head. Come, put them to work. How am I to put him over this evening?”

“I don’t think it is quite a proper or honest thing to suggest, but—is there someone you could trust to ask him specific questions for which you could prepare him? I mean, if he
knew
in advance what the questions were to be, maybe you could jot down points and let him use his own words. Maybe—maybe those flashing culls you
mentioned, for I don’t think you should let the local people know what you’re up to.”

“You’re marvelous,”
he said.

She blinked in surprise and then feared she was blushing as well.

“You have saved the day, or night, for me, Madame Machiavelli. Was this done in the West Riding, or did this piece of deceit come from your own head?”

“I thought of it myself. It isn’t really
dishonest.
It is just giving him the chance to put forth his views.”

“Excellent rationalizing. You wouldn’t care to help me chase rats this afternoon?”

“Have your flashing culls do it. It will keep them out of mischief. Worse mischief, I mean.”

“That’s
flash
culls, Miss Watters. If you’re going to patter flash with me—speak thieves’
cant—you had better get the idiom straight. Between teaching Tony Latin and you flash I’ll be forgetting my own English.”

“And then there are the Marquis de Sade’s French stories to further confuse you.”

“Oh no, we are reading that in English translation.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be!”

“I agree it is better to read the book in its original language when possible, but Tony’s copy has been put into English ...”

“You know that’s not what I meant!”

“Too late. I took you for a Bath Miss when I first met you, with your implying I should not mention Alistair’s
criminal record,
but I am coming to have a better idea of you now. I mean better in both its senses, in case you wonder—clearer and improved both. You are up to all the rigs, Miss Watters.”

Lillian felt as highly complimented by this praise of her skill in deceit as if he had given her a real compliment. She realized, after the gentlemen had left, that her own moral principles stood to be in some jeopardy from this gentleman with the noble face of a judge and the mind of a common criminal.

“What had Mr. Hudson to say, Lillian?”
Martha asked her.

“Just talking about the meeting tonight. He fears it may be rough.”

“I expect it will. And by the by, Lillian, it isn’t necessary for you to so monopolize Mr. Hudson when he calls. We would all like a word with him. When I hinted you might help to entertain him, I didn’t mean for you to make it a full-time job. He
seems
well enough, but we really know very little about him.”

“We were just talking about politics. He is well-informed; it is a pleasure to speak to a gentleman who knows exactly what is going on.”

“I noticed you took no small degree of pleasure in his company. That won’t do—won’t do at all—at least not till we find out more about him. Try if you can find out where he’s from.”

“He mentioned an estate and tenants,”
Lillian said with satisfaction.

“Did he, indeed! How large? Where?”

“I must have some more private conversation with him to find that out, but he is not always a whipper-in.”

“A party whip, Lillian, is not a man who gets the candidates elected, but a highly respected gentleman who assembles the members for a vote and even manages them.”

“I know. He mentioned something of the sort.”

“You may be sure he has no real influence in the party. He is only some junior clerk . . .”
Martha stopped, for she suddenly realized she was talking nonsense. Mr. Hudson might not be a man of great means, but he at least dealt in large sums of somebody’s money, and was certainly not a junior clerk. “I’ll have a chat with him myself next time he comes,”
she said.

“They will be stopping by tomorrow,”
Lillian told her.

“Will they indeed? Mr. Fellows did not say so.”

“I don’t think Mr. Fellows has much to say about anything, except such words as Mr. Hudson sticks into his mouth.”

“Bless me! You don’t suppose it’s Hudson we should be getting for Sara, do you? It would be well to have one in the family with a little brains. You can look after yourself and don’t require a sharp husband, but when I consider the way Mr. Fellows wasted his money on those wilted vegetables, I wonder if he is the right husband for Sara.”

Sara listened in smiling silence to this discussion, as did her mother. “I like Mr. Fellows better,”
Sara allowed in a low tone to her mama. “He isn’t so hard to talk to.”

“He is very conversable, certainly,”
Lady Monteith told her daughter. She didn’t really think so herself, but Martha had said so, and Gerald’s sister knew everything.

As promised, Hudson brought Fellows to New Moon in the morning to report on the meeting at the Town Hall. Mr. Fellows was in his usual optimistic mood, but Mr. Hudson seemed a trifle out of sorts. He wore a plaster under his left eye, and even before the ladies inquired into the success of the meeting, this had to be asked about.

“I ran into a door in the dark,”
Mr. Hudson said.

Before long, Fellows was off on his speech laboriously learned for the meeting and still remembered all these hours later. “We got right into it. My manager”—he smiled warmly at Hudson—”is the cleverest fellow that ever was. He knew every question that was likely to come up. They couldn’t trip me up on a thing. By Jove, I wish I’d had you to help me prepare for Oxford, Matt. I gave them what-for about the way they’re treating our veterans—’the bravest and best amongst us, the flower of our manhood, men who spilled their blood for their country and left behind them on foreign shores very real parts of themselves—often a leg or an arm or a nose!’
"

“That’s an eye, Tony,”
Matt corrected.

“Or an eye, and—dash it! you’ve thrown me off. Where was I? Oh yes, or an eye, and ‘now come home to be treated like second-class citizens.’
That went down pretty well, I can tell you. There was Jenkins sitting right in the audience with his leg left in France, and Coulter lost a boy in the Peninsula.”

“He’s a
corn-grower, isn’t he?”
Matt asked.

“Yes, by Jove. And Harmer’s lad too was in Spain—not killed, but a bit of a knock-in-the-head since he came back. Well, he was never a sharp lad, but he’s taken to ducking behind carriages and houses—thinks he’s dodging bullets still. A complete moonling he’s turned into. Left his brains behind on Spain’s foreign shore.”

“We should be pushing that point stronger,”
Matt said. “I hadn’t realized there were so many veterans in the community, and at least two of them grain-growers’
sons. That wouldn’t go down badly with them.”

“Was there much violence at the meeting?”
Martha asked.

“Very little,”
Fellows told her. “A bit of a scuffle outside, but in the hall itself there was no cat-throwing. Alistair got a few potatoes tossed at him, but only at the body. They missed his face.”

“You mean somebody threw potatoes at Mr. Alistair?”
Sara asked.

“He was not hurt at all,”
Hudson assured her.

“Who would do such a thing? Mr. Hudson,
you
are in charge of making it a clean campaign, and I hope you will look into this.”

“I expect Reising is looking into it. It is his job to
protect Alistair.”

“I think he should get out of politics. It is too dangerous,”
Sara said, indulging in a frown.

“That’s right, Miss Monteith,”
Fellows agreed. “Politics is for men, not boys, right, Matthew?”

“Right, Tony.”

“Mr. Alistair is a man!”
Sara asseverated. “But a
gentleman,
not a politician.”

“It’s a rough game,”
Fellows remarked, raking his memory without success for an epigram to clinch the matter.

With her aunt’s injunctions regarding monopolizing Mr. Hudson’s time fresh in her ears, Lillian was careful not to look too much in his direction, but she was aware all the same that he was looking at her, and when Martha began going over her list for the tea party with Fellows, he rose from his chair and came to join her on the sofa.

“How did it really go?”
she asked him.

“Be kind to me—don’t ask. Just let me sit here and bleed quietly on your lap.”

“Another dead loss?”

“Not a total fiasco. He remembered the answers, but didn’t always put them to the right questions. There seemed to be some confusion when he got to Peter robbing Paul’s pocket to buy corn, but at least he didn’t finger Peter Peckham as the culprit. I sweated buckets, as you may imagine. And the less said about the local bridge, the better. He unwittingly gives that major point to Alistair every time. Those tight-fisted Tories only reward their own, you know, and he neglects to mention that reward has not been forthcoming these ten years the old bridge has been down. Then too, he’s really pleased as punch to be getting his ten shillings a bushel for his grain, so
that
point doesn’t go over so well as it might with the non-growers. But all things considered, it wasn’t as awful as I feared, and it is you I have to thank for the idea of feeding him prepared questions.”

“And what really happened to your eye? Did one of Reising’s flash culls take a swing at you?”

“No, I actually was hit by a flying door. A big bruiser of a fellow threw it at me in that scuffle outside. And it was my door, too; I was the one who pulled it off its hinges to protect myself. But it’s only a scratch. I nearly managed to dodge it entirely.”

“It gives you a disreputable look you can ill afford. When anyone is so steeped in foul deeds as you are, he ought to keep up every semblance of respectability. I suppose that is why you walk around so stiffly and drive that solemn black carriage.”

“I never before met a woman with such a natural instinct for this shady game as you have, Miss Watters,”
he congratulated, and she was not displeased with this left-handed compliment.

There was suddenly a soft shriek of delight from Sara. “We would love it of all things!”
she said.

“It sounds very nice. We will be happy to go,”
Martha added, less intensely.

“I’m telling them about the assembly that you’re calling a harvest ball, Matt,”
Fellows said. “Really only an excuse for us to get at the Tories in a social setting and see if we can open their eyes. You must all not let on it’s Matt’s party, for he’s got a bunch—Basingstoke and some gentlefolk—he’s pretending are running it, but it’s really for me.”

“An assembly, not really a ball, at the Assembly Hall in ten days’
time. I hope you will all come,”
Hudson explained.

“And he’s soaking everybody a guinea a couple to raise the
sine qua non’s
for my campaign,”
Fellows warned them.

“We are inviting the ladies of New Moon as our guests,”
Hudson added, disliking to have the price of their hospitality discussed so openly. “And a dinner is included in the price, so it isn’t quite such a soaking as you say.”

“Yes, but you’re making all the Whigs’
wives supply the dinner, then turning around and making them pay for it.”

“Your bribery is turned upside down on you, Mr. Hudson,”
Lillian ventured.

“Involvement, that’s the thing. Get them interested, and what are ladies ever interested in but balls and gowns.”

“In men,”
Lady Monteith told him, her first contribution to the conversation.

“Oh well, if it’s men you want, the assembly is the place for it. Politics is for men, not boys,”
Tony assured her.

“Will the Tories be
there too?”
Sara asked eagerly.

“Yes, Mr. Alistair will be there,”
Lillian replied.

“Is there something going on between her and Alistair?”
Hudson inquired quietly.

“She would like there to be, and it does seem hard that you two Whigs should run tame in her house when her papa was always a Tory.”

“That fact, amongst others, makes this house a particularly attractive one for us. It looks as though we have converted one Tory citadel.”

“So that’s why you keep popping in here!”

“I did say that reason amongst others. That the two loveliest girls in the neighborhood also live here doesn’t help keep us two bachelors away. I rather thought your Aunt Martha was shoving Sara at Fellows’s head. Am I mistaken?”

On every visit he surprised her. Today he was making free with their first names as though he had known them forever.

“It would be a suitable match. I doubt that anything will come of it.”

“A dangerous pair.”

“Whig and Tory, you mean?”

“No, idiot and imbecile. Both of them Tories at heart—what indiscretions might they not utter if they were too much together! Sara clammering for a bridge to get to Chepstow to shop, and Tony telling the world only a Tory can supply it. We must keep an eye on them. Oh, there is a sort of gala festival in town tomorrow night—dancing in the streets, refreshments and so on, some entertainment from London—jugglers and the like, I’m afraid. You must have heard of it. Will your Aunt Martha take you, or is it considered too common a frolic for young ladies?”

“How common a frolic will it be? I take for granted it is all your doing.”

“No, you’re out. It is Reising’s party, and the harvest ball, as we are calling it, is my revenge. As it is a Tory affair, I don’t hesitate to tell you it will begin by being common and end up a drunken brawl. I hope that won’t keep you away, however,”

“It sounds lovely. We might go early for the common part of it, but Auntie will surely draw the line at a drunken brawl. We shall miss the best part,”
she said archly.

“If it is the lack of male escorts in the house to take you, I will be happy to offer Fellows and myself.”