by Joan Smith
She had an attentive audience, for she rarely spoke out in such a firm voice and never on a serious matter. “The Tories only want to stop other countries from dumping their grain on us.” She had been much struck with the phrase in the pamphlet, wondering where those countries would dump it, and thinking how odd it would look—great stacks of grain sitting about the countryside.
“Bless me, where did you learn such a thing, love?” her mother asked, very proud of her. “Your papa was used to say that very thing. Only think, she remembers that from her father, and Gerald in his grave over a year.”
This was Mr. Hudson’s first indication that the Tory element in the house was still active, and he looked a question at Martha.
“Gerald always talked a deal of nonsense. Have no fear, gentlemen. We are on your side.”
“That is an old Tory idea—that countries are dumping their excess grain on us—but when our own harvest was poor, as it was last year and this, it should not be called dumping, but honest trading; God knows we export enough products to other countries.” He addressed these remarks to Tony, but his candidate was looking elsewhere, for he was once again struck by Sara’s beauty.
“It’s unusual to find brains and beauty in a lady,” he congratulated her.
“Oh, I am not at all clever, Mr. Fellows,” she objected.
“What you just said about dumping—that was clever.”
“No, Tony, that was not clever, as I have just been explaining,” Hudson told him. “It is very shortsighted.”
“I meant clever for a lady,” Tony said, with a condescending look at the four women. “But a woman’s place is in the home, what? Shall we be off to spend more of the old sine qua non’s?” he asked. Hudson rubbed his brow in a weary fashion and said that they had better spend a great deal, and they were off.
Miss Monteith had come to New Moon to get Sara married, and as the groom was to be in the village spending his patrimony, she shepherded her charges in that direction after lunch. Lady Monteith stayed home, as it was not her custom to budge an inch unless it should be necessary.
The groom was not seen, since Hudson had taken him to visit Basingstoke and the families who lived to the West, but Martha discovered two items of interest, one of which inflamed her to wrath. There was to be a large political rally three evenings hence, and its significance to her was that Mr. Fellows would not be able to dine with them on that evening. The other news was that Mr. Alistair was a criminal even if he hadn’t a record, and so she would warn Mr. Fellows accordingly. His crime was that he was corrupting the merchants of Crockett.
She overheard Mr. McGillicutty, the cobbler, say with a laugh that he had never got twenty-five pounds for a pair of boots before, and she stood examining a pair of leather laces till this interesting piece of information should be explained to her satisfaction. She imagined him to be fashioning some marvelous footgear for the royal family, but no. It was soon revealed that Mr. Alistair was paying the cobbler twenty-five pounds for a plain pair of boots without even a white band to the top of them, and if that was not corruption she was a wet goose! Her fiery eyes let it be known to her nieces how far from a wet goose she considered herself to be.
“But Mr. Fellows paid a crown for a bushel of turnips, Aunt Martha, and no one ever paid more than a half-crown before,” Sara pointed out.
“Charity—that is a different matter. Certainly he was taken in on the price of turnips—I mentioned it myself—but it was an error, not bribery. Twenty-five pounds for a pair of topboots is a very different matter. Mr. Fellows will hear of this, and Mr. Alistair will stand revealed for the low, criminal conniver he is. I didn’t like the looks of him from the beginning. He grins. Never trust a man that grins, girls. Let it be a lesson to both of you.”
“I like the way he grins,” Sara said softly.
“He’ll grin on the other side of his face when Mr. Fellows gets after him,” Martha replied.
Miss Watters rather thought it would be Mr. Hudson who would get after him; she had no doubt that the gentleman of high morals would put a speedy end to bribery and corruption in the village.
Martha went home immediately and sent a footboy off to St. Christopher’s Abbey requesting Mr. Fellows’s immediate—underlined twice—attendance on her regarding a most important matter. It suited her well to have such a good excuse to lure him back to New Moon, where she had every intention that he should remain for dinner and the evening.
Nor did she have the least objection if Mr. Hudson should accompany him, for he had been seen to drive about the countryside in a very dignified black carriage drawn by a matched team of bays. She had observed as well that he had more than one well-cut coat to his back, and a fine gold watch. (There appeared to be sort of a crest on the watch, but her hopes had not soared to the height of thinking he had any right to the crest. There was still enough lowness in him that he might have won it in a card game.)
“You, Lillian, can help me keep Mr. Hudson occupied so that Sara may have a minute alone with Mr. Fellows. A little privacy in a far corner is all I mean, of course, for certainly we shan’t leave the room. Even the best of men, as Mr. Fellows certainly is, is not to be entirely trusted.”
“I look forward to speaking to Mr. Hudson again. He is the more sensible of the two, I feel.”
“He’s sharp as a tack, I have no doubt, but don’t get to dangling after him, my dear, for we really don’t know a thing about him. He cannot be a man of much means or he wouldn’t be doing this low sort of clerical work for Mr. Fellows, but would have a place of his own to look after. I wonder if the party supplies him with a team for his work.” This possibility, just occurred to her, sent Mr. Hudson down a notch. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and Mr. Thorstein is interested in you.”
“You are learning a trick from Mr. Fellows, I see, throwing platitudes at me, but you must not give them quite so much point.” Lillian made no mention of Mr. Thorstein’s having twice offered for her and twice being rejected, but accepted quite happily her evening’s job.
Martha’s plan of getting the gentlemen to dinner did not work, however. They did not arrive till eight, and Mr. Hudson mentioned being very busy, giving a glance at his interesting crested watch as though he considered even this late visit an inconvenience.
Martha, who soon usurped the hostess’s role in whatever home she visited, saw the gentlemen seated with a glass of wine in their hands before she exploded her bomb regarding the bribery Mr. Alistair had brought to Crockett.
“By Jove!” Mr. Fellows said, and glanced to Hudson for a clue as to how he should feel about this outrage.
“Up to that old trick, are they,” Hudson commented, neither outraged nor even surprised, to judge from his sardonic smile. “It isn’t the first time, believe me.”
“I’m sure Mr. Alistair never corrupted anyone before,” Sara told him with a very earnest face.
“Alistair? No, no, this is Reising’s doing. Twenty-five pounds, did you say, ma’am?”
“Exactly, and they weren’t worth a guinea or anything near it. Shoddy work.”
“Mr. Alistair never wears shoddy boots!” Sara exclaimed.
“He has a shoddy way of buying them,” her aunt said sharply. “What do you mean to do about it, Mr. Fellows?”
“I never buy my boots from McGillicutty. I buy in London,” he informed her, with a smug smile at his cunning. “If Alistair wants to throw away his sine qua non’s on shoddy boots, well, caveat emptor, eh, Matt? If the shoe fits, wear it.”
Sara frowned in confusion at such hard talk, and felt strongly inclined to defend Mr. Alistair further.
“What do you mean to do about your opponent sinking to bribery, I mean?” Martha asked, not yet quite angry but becoming definitely impatient.
“I wouldn’t do a thing,” Hudson said. Fellows immediately nodded his head in approval, but Miss Monteith and Lillian were amazed.
“You don’t mean to let him get away with it!” Lillian said. “You wan
ted an honest campaign, Mr. Hudson. Oh, I see what it is. You will not lower yourself to reveal publicly what he has done, but in private surely you will have a word with him—warn him you will not tolerate such finagling as this.”
He observed her closely as she spoke with some unreadable expression on his face—a little surprise perhaps, a little smile, and possibly a bit of cunning. “I assure you, Miss Watters, I don’t mean to let him get away with it. Have I not already had occasion to tell you I have my wits about me?”
Mr. Fellows was telling the other ladies in his resonant, speech-making voice that he never bought a stitch of his clothing or a stick of his furniture or anything else in this pokey little town, for there wasn’t a decent craftsman in the whole area, and they all charged as much as you’d pay for decent goods in London.
Hudson heard him out, then decided that he must be set straight at once. “It will be your responsibility, after you are elected, Tony, to praise your village as the finest corner in England, inhabited by the cleverest craftsmen, with the best produce and weather and all the rest of it. Begin by buying locally—that is the least the merchants can expect of you, the man they mean to send to London. How are they going to know of Crockett and its problems in the city if their M.P. is not praising the town wherever he goes.”
“They’d laugh me to scorn if I went off to London wearing Jed McGillicutty’s coarse old boots, or Frank Saunders’s misshapen hats. How am I to be entertaining ministers and lords in my home if I haven’t a decent stick of furniture or good food on my table?”
“Publicly and locally, however, you must seem to be enchanted with your town or it will not be enchanted with you, and vote for you, and send you off to London as the Honorable Anthony Fellows, M.P., to represent it in Parliament.”
The magic Honorable and M.P. did the trick. “Just buy their old junk and wear it around the village, you mean?” Mr. Fellows asked, wondering whether he could sink himself so low, for in spite of his talk of London, he rarely went near it; it was the locals’ opinion of him that he considered important. Of greatest importance was that he be thought a cut above them all—a gent who had a London tailor. What a dilemma!
“I mean buy the excellent wares of Messrs. McGillicutty and Saunders and others, and be seen to wear them.”
“Heh heh—look a dashed quiz,” Tony said to Sara.
“Mr. Alistair bought McGillicutty’s boots and he would never wear shoddy boots,” Sara assured him, but was not curious enough or interested enough to once cast her eyes down to see what sort of boots Mr. Fellows had on.
All this was fine, but Martha was soon back demanding to know precisely what was to be done about the corruption. As she put her question to Fellows, Miss Watters listened with interest.
“Matthew will think of something,” Tony assured them, causing them to look to Mr. Hudson for information.
“I have thought of something,” Hudson told them, “and it’s time we got busy and did it. We also have to go over the items that are likely to arise at the public meeting. Shall we go, Tony?”
Tony rose obligingly to make his adieux.
“Twenty-five pounds, you said, Miss Monteith?” Hudson queried Martha as they left.
“Twenty-five pounds. I was shocked,” she told him.
“I am a little surprised at the sum myself,” he said with a smile.
“I do believe Alistair is beginning to see the light,” Tony put in. Only Sara followed his rambling reasoning.
“He must have become a Whig!” she said at once. “He is no longer keeping all the money for himself.”
It was noticed by Martha and Lillian that Mr. Hudson’s lips were unsteady when Tony said to him, “Told you she was a deuced clever girl,” but till he was out the door he did not allow himself to lose control.
After they had left, Lady Monteith poured herself a glass of ratafia and said, “That’s taken care of. Mr. Fellows will do something.”
“You’re a goose, Melanie. It is Mr. Hudson who will do something,” Martha informed her. “Fellows may be the candidate, but it becomes clear it is Mr. Hudson who is running the show.”
Lillian thought it had been clear for some time. She listened with amusement while Martha continued, “At least Mr. Hudson is a proper sort of a gentleman. Not well off, but I daresay he may be from a good family for all that—a younger son, you know. He means to take steps to see the corruption is stopped. I wonder what he will do.”
The Rubicon was passed. Authority was in Mr. Hudson’s hands; he was somebody. She didn’t yet know precisely who, but his carriage was allowed to be his own from that moment on, and the watch, likely a gift from his family who possessed a crest and the right to have it emblazoned on a watch for a younger son if they chose.
* * * *
Never one to shilly-shally, Martha had set a date for the tea party, and the next morning she had the three females gathered around her to make up a list and address cards. It proved a more difficult chore than she had imagined, for Sara and Melanie between them couldn’t remember a dozen names offhand. They had to be taken for a mental drive down each street and lane to aid their memory. “Who lives in that fine old half-timbered place on the corner?” Martha asked Sara.
“The McLaughlins. They will want to come, to be sure. We must ask them or they will be vexed.” Then, as the envelope was being addressed, she added, “Only of course she is Mr. Alistair’s sister, and might not want to come to a Whig party.” She felt dashing indeed to be giving a political party, with such deep and cunning matters as this to consider.
“Peagoose!” Martha declared bluntly, crumpling the envelope. “What about your churchman here? What is his name and should we ask him?”
“We must certainly ask Dr. Everett. He would be shocked if we did not. He loves a tea party.”
“Is he any kin of the Alistairs?” Martha asked ironically.
“No indeed, he does not care for Mr. Alistair in the least since he wouldn’t give a penny for the fuel fund to cover the cost of the coal last year. And his mama would not even go out and canvass.”
“Mr. Hudson will want to hear of this!” Mr. Everett’s card was set aside to be delivered in person. A minister of the church might be a powerful ally, if he were popular.
In this fashion the morning passed away, and by lunch they had a respectable stack of envelopes addressed. Sara was talked out of addressing a card to Mr. Alistair, and it seemed a great shame to her that a tea given at her house should be for the opposition when she herself had suddenly become a Tory. Seventeen years of Papa’s talk had had no effect, but after Mr. Alistair had smiled at her she had become a secret Tory, with her pamphlet kept under her pillow, quite as dog-eared as Peter Pepper’s Perfect Day, though less thoroughly understood.
In the afternoon several of the cards were delivered in person by the ladies, who did a little discreet campaigning of their own consisting mainly of compliments for Mr. Fellows’s appearance, manners, morals, and abbey, along with the rider that Mr. Hudson seemed a very nice gentleman too.
By 4:30 the ladies were home from delivering cards and had pretty well given up hope of any more excitement for the day when Mr. Fellows and his friend were announced. They came in carrying new hats in their hands. “Mr. Hudson, have you taken care of that Tory corrupter?” Martha demanded.
“I think we’ve spiked his guns, and thank you for the tip, ma’am. How do you like our new chapeaux, ladies? Dashing, don’t you think?” He put his hat on, as did Fellows. They looked not only inferior hats, but ill-fitting as well—Hudson’s a little on the small side, so that it sat on the side of his head at a cocky angle, and Fellows’s nestling more closely about the ears than a hat should.
“They’re very nice,” Sara said dutifully.
“I don’t like it so well as your other, Mr. Hudson. I think I like your own hat better,” Martha said, regarding the new hat judiciously. She reached out a hand for it and turned it upside down to examine the workmanship. “Why, the band is loos
e, and it has only a half-inch gros-grain around the brim. Not satisfactory at all! I hope you didn’t pay much for it.”
“I haven’t paid anything yet. The price must depend on the outcome of the election.”
Lillian narrowed her eyes suspiciously. When she glanced at Mr. Hudson, she saw he was smiling at her. “What is to be the price if Mr. Fellows gets in?” she asked.
“Fifty pounds.”
“Fifty pounds!” Martha gasped. “Mr. Hudson, you must be mad,”
“Oh no. If it, and Mr. Fellows’s hat, prove such winning chapeaux that we are successful, I consider it a fair price.”
“But that is bribery too!” Lillian charged.
“No, no, it is business. If the hat proves ineffectual, the cost is only a crown. Now that, you must own, is a perfectly appropriate price for a hat.”
“And if you are willing to pay your crown for a hat, I suppose your soul is the price of Mr. Saunders’s boots during an election campaign,” Lillian said, sadly shocked that the august Mr. Hudson was not only a tyrant (she didn’t really mind that too much) but a corrupter as well.
“No, the price for all raiments is the same—a hundred pounds for a pair of all we bought—boots, jackets, shirts. Fortunately we shan’t be required to wear anything but the hats. They hadn’t boots or jackets in stock to fit us.”
“They didn’t have hats either!” Lillian pointed out.
“No, but I feel Tony really ought to have at least a token of local produce about him, and the hats were not so uncomfortable as boots that pinched, or a jacket that pulled across the shoulders. It is the thought that counts.”
“This sounds highly irregular, Mr. Hudson,” Martha said, feeling almost faint as she realized what she was being told in the most brass-faced manner in the world. “It seems you are but another corrupter. You politicians are all alike.”
“It is the regular custom, I assure you, ma’am, to grease the wheels a little during a campaign.”