by Joan Smith
“But you were shocked that Mr. Alistair did it!” Sara objected.
“I was surprised that Reising was doling out only twenty-five pounds. I hadn’t realized he was on such a tight budget. The word I had was that Sir John Sinclair had come down pretty heavily, to insure getting Alistair in. He looks to make a good profit from the bridge, if it is ever built, and the improvements on the roads too, as he owns the construction company that would get the contracts.”
Martha had always known that the world of men was an evil place. Mr. Thorstein had spoken more than once to her in an oblique and incomprehensible manner of such things, but now she felt herself to be at the very center of them. This, then, was how they managed affairs. It was deplorable, of course, but it was the way of menfolk, and like their gambling and debauchery it was a thing a lady must turn a blind eye to and accept. It rather thrilled her after all to know her party was just as sharp as the other.
The amount of the bribes and the unconcerned manner of the disclosure led her to believe that Mr. Hudson dealt in higher figures than she had thought. (Corruption and bribery on such a scale she could not help admiring.) “How much has it cost you in round figures, Mr. Hudson?” she inquired in a worldly tone.
“Three hundred each,” he said blandly.
“I see the election is a very good thing for the merchants,” Lillian said. “They win, whoever gets in.”
“Yes, they would be happy to see an election every year, no doubt, but the hats, I trust, will last us till the next general election.”
“I’m sure they will. I doubt they will see much wear once the campaign is over,” Lillian replied, eying Mr. Hudson’s hat askance.
“But they will—all the things will serve as bribes to some unfashionable gents at the next by-election,” Hudson told her, a glint of mischief in his eyes.
“You are just as bad as Reising and the Tories!”
“We call it good in politics, and either way we mean effective. There is no point trying to keep your hands entirely clean when you’re in this business. This is going to be a very difficult election, and the Whigs sent their wiliest schemer—me.”
“You sound proud of it.”
“I’m not ashamed of it. The end justifies the means.”
“A theory of Signor Machiavelli, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Among other effectual gentlemen, yes. You call yourself a Whig—why do you dislike what I am doing? You know the Tories’ record on the Luddite riots. If Paris vaut bien une messe, as one of the old kings said when he turned Catholic to gain France, then Crockett vaut bien un chapeau un peu cher.”
“Très cher, et des bottes aussi. But in French or English, it is bribery. You are corrupting innocent people.”
This foray into French completely bewildered Fellows and Sara, who began to examine his hat with keen interest and to discover loose threads. “A stitch in time saves nine, what?” he remarked cleverly.
Hudson rose and went to join Lillian. Martha observed him as he seated himself at her side and turned to Melanie, her mind seething with conjecture and none of it political.
“Have I shocked you, Miss Watters? We are only continuing a long-established practice, and the merchants would be sore as boils if we didn’t corrupt ‘em a little. Little thanks they’d give you for standing up for their virtue in this idealistic fashion. Ask them.”
“Where are you getting all this money?”
“Various places.”
“Tell me one. The man who pays the piper calls the tune, if I may borrow a cliché from your pupil.”
“He’ll never miss it. He has a hundred of them. And he is providing some of the blunt himself, so you see how wrong you are about calling tunes. Myself for another—and you know by now what a shy, retiring fellow I am in the matter of calling tunes. But of course the majority of it comes from the party coffers. The Whig aristocracy is wealthy—they can well afford to buy me and Tony a hat and a pair of boots.”
“Yes, and no doubt they will be well-reimbursed for it by some sort of under-handedness if your party ever gets in.”
“You have all the makings of a fine politician, ma’am. I’m tempted to stick a beard and a pair of trousers, on you and run you in the next by-election.”
Lillian was a little surprised at the blunt, bordering on the crude, speech. She had thought from his rather stiff appearance he would be more formal, especially with a lady.
“I could use the new wardrobe. I daresay I’d have a closetful of gowns before it was over.”
“No, no—trousers! But I have the notion that’s what you’ll be wearing after you’re married—or trying to,” he said, quizzing her.
“You find me a managing female?”
“I find you delightful as always, Miss Watters. A regular ray of sunshine.”
To hear the high-principled Mr. Hudson flash from informality to outright flirtation after his descent into corruption was too much for Miss Watters to assimilate. She sat stunned, while he ran on nonchalantly. “And as usual, I can take only a brief exposure to your salutary rays, but I feel the goodness of them all day long. A man in the corrupt line of business that I am in needs to be reminded there are still innocent souls in the world.” He smiled warmly, casting a golden glow of his own.
“I expect it is nearly your dinner time,” he said. “We only came to show off our new hats. Did I shock your aunt, do you think? I know I shocked you. I ought not, perhaps, to have said anything, but if you are to continue helping us, it is better to drop you the hint we are not so immaculate as she thought us—you all thought us.”
“I was surprised my aunt’s objections were not more strenuous. But she is violently anti-Tory and must consider no trick too low if it will beat them.”
“And you? Do you feel it was an awful thing to do? It is done all the time, by all parties.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right, or a dozen or a hundred wrongs either.”
“No, but they might get the right candidate elected. Will you continue to support us?”
She wondered whether it was a request or only a question. “I suppose, as Mr. Reising started it, you hadn’t much choice.”
“If he hadn’t started it, I would have. He is spending very lightly—he must think he’s got this seat sewed up. Twenty-five pounds is an insult.”
“Perhaps he paid another twenty-five for the polish for the boots?”
He smiled rather lazily. “I have to try to pour a whole lifetime’s education into Mr. Fellows in the few days before that meeting. We really must go. I look forward to seeing you again soon.” There was something in his voice or expression that made her feel she was being singled out for special attention. As he turned to Fellows and Sara, Lillian’s eyes followed him.
“Really a pretty fine hat,” Mr. Fellows was saying, holding it up and regarding it with admiration. “I daresay it might be taken for a Baxter, but I’ll be sure to tell them at Whitehall it was made by Saunders of Crockett.”
Hudson glanced at Lillian, who could scarcely control her laughter. “I didn’t expect him to bother quoting me in this house, where my first lecture was overheard,” he said.
“You put him up to that!”
“Only to please Saunders. He is more likely to send Fellows to London if he thinks he will be a walking advertisement, you know.”
“I know this campaign is not going to be as lily-pure as you let on. Already we have been subjected to bribery and outright lies.”
“And I’ve only been here three days! What might I not be up to in the next three weeks?”
“If I hear of a number of corpses littering the streets of Crockett, I shall know where to look for the murderer.”
“Only if they’re Tory corpses. Come along, Tony, back to work. No rest for the wicked.”
“He’s only funning, you know,” Tony assured the ladies. “It’s the Tories who are wicked, but we’ll show them. And when I go up to London to represent Crockett I will say that Crockett has the prettiest
girls in England too, as well as the best craftsmen, right, Hudson?”
“Right, Tony.” He smiled to see that Sara did not object to having her staggering beauty debased to the level of perfection of Mr. Saunders’s hat. But the other sharp-eyed little filly was laughing behind her prim lips. He winked at her and watched in amusement as she let on not to see it, glancing away quickly and then back at him with a questioning frown.
Chapter 6
Aunt Martha’s pursuit of Mr. Fellows as a husband for Sara was by no means abated upon her discovering that he was a fool. In fact, his mentality was exactly suited to Sara’s own. She couldn’t think of anyone else who could tolerate either of them. She could seldom dislodge Lady Monteith from the house in the pursuit, but the girls were always happy to go into town, and Crockett was becoming a very interesting place these days. With all the merchants having so much extra money in their pockets, spirits were lively all over, and any day it was four pence to a groat that one or the other or even both of the candidates would be seen there in the midst of a group, laughing, talking, and shaking hands—usually at some point in the day strolling into the Cat’s Paw for a meal or to stand a round of drinks.
Both candidates and their whippers-in considered themselves on fine terms with the ladies from New Moon, and would stop to chat with them if it was possible, but two days passed without Hudson and Fellows again calling at the house. In the interim, a Tory meeting took place at the Veterans’ Hall, and one of the pieces of news heard in the town later was that the meeting had become rather rough. Mr. Alistair had been pelted with rotten apples, presumably not by Tories. But of course no one had so low opinion of either Tony or Hudson as to feel they were involved in it. It was some local people of the lower classes, and it was disgraceful.
Between visits to Crockett and the surrounding countryside, Hudson and Fellows worked together in an effort to make Fellows conversant with the principles of his party. Having had a Tory father all his life, he had an unfortunate tendency to spout off Tory ideas. Mr. Hudson was worried about the large public meeting to be held at the Town Hall. On the day of the meeting, they stopped at New Moon and were of course asked how the campaign was going.
“We’ve got them on the run,” Fellows said happily. “You heard about the rout at the Tory meeting? Alistair was rompéed entirely. He’ll not get a vote come November first, depend on it. If he was boo’d at a Tory meeting of corn-growers, you may imagine what his chances are tonight, when my supporters are out in force.”
“Mr. Alistair said it was the Whigs who threw the apples, Mr. Fellows,” Sara told him. “I think if your supporters are to be there tonight, you had better both be careful, for it was the Whigs who threw the rotten apples.”
“Nonsense!” he said indignantly. “It was a Tory meeting. What would my men have been doing there?”
“The Whigs threw apples at Mr. Alistair, and it was not very nice,” she insisted, pouting.
“But why should his own men pelt him with apples?” Lillian asked, with a suspicious eye in Mr. Hudson’s direction. There was a sparkle in his gray eyes as he lifted a brow at her that she did not quite trust.
“Why, the Tories are so stupid they don’t know the difference,” was Tony’s explanation of the affair.
“It looks as if it might be a rough meeting tonight,” Lillian said, turning to Mr. Hudson, who had seated himself beside her upon entering, a mark of distinction both noticed and felt by her.
“I look forward to a lively débacle,” he said with a conspiratorial smile, and then, speaking in a low voice, presumably to spare Tony, “Rotten eggs, cat-calls—the whole cat, in fact, flung in his face.”
“There were dead cats thrown in the West Riding. Disgusting! Will it be likely to happen here?”
“I consider it almost inevitable. Keep a sharp eye on your domestic brindle or she’ll end up on Alistair’s—or Fellows’s—shoulders.”
“Mr. Fellows won’t stick it, Mr. Hudson. He stands too high on his dignity for such rough treatment.”
“He looks forward to the honor. I have prepared him.”
“No, not even you could accomplish that.”
“You have a low opinion of my powers of persuasion, ma’am. Listen to him; he’s giving your aunt my lecture now. Please allow for its mangling at his hands.”
They both looked toward Mr. Fellows, who was holding forth in his resonant voice. “It will be rough going tonight, but politics is for men, not boys. You can always expect to come in for abuse when you stand up for something. The bishop of London, Lord Castlereagh and all the outstanding men of the times were abused and vilified during the Corn Riots. Their windows were broken and mud and stones were flung at them in the streets. Even the Prince of Wales knows well enough how it is—he dare not go in the streets for fear of being pelted with garbage. I will be in good company. But I will take it all with dignity.”
Lillian turned to Hudson with a sapient eye. “What is the dignified way to take a dead cat being thrown at you?” she asked.
“It involves a deal of ducking and dodging.”
“It sounds monstrously dignified. Your Mr. Fellows is not noticeably light-footed. You may have talked him into accepting it mentally, but what will happen when he is faced with the reality of it? He’ll cry craven and bolt on you, Mr. Hudson. Depend on it.”
“I’ll reinforce him with another bout of lectures before we go and circulate some fellows amongst the audience to lift any suspicious brown bags they see. I have half a dozen flash culls from the east side of London arrived today.”
"What on earth are flash culls?” she demanded.
“Petty criminals,” he answered, unmoved. “Excellent for this sort of work, and it keeps them out of real mischief. Mind you, there’s one in the bunch is on the ken lay—ah—a housebreaker, in genteel parlance. Have an eye to your silver and jewelry for the next few days.”
“You employ common criminals in your work?” she gasped.
“Shh!” he said with a nervous glance at the rest of the group. “Let them recover from my corruption before they hear of this. They are not really bad fellows at all, I assure you. I find them totally reliable. There was a list of names I absolutely had to get hold of at the last general election, and my own best efforts at burgling the gent’s room came to nought, so in desperation I hired a gallows-bird . . . oh dear, I’ve lost you again. I hired a pickpocket to filch it from the man’s pocket for me. He put me in touch with a few other flash culls and I find their skills very useful.”
“Upon my word, you are shameless!” she said, but in a low voice, to help him conceal his conduct.
“You wrong me. I am very much ashamed of myself,” he answered her with mock humility.
“You said it would be a clean campaign!”
“And so it will be. Throwing dead cats, you must admit, is not a gentlemanly thing to do.”
“I suppose you had nothing to do with the rotten apples that littered the stage of the Veterans’ Hall after last night.”
“I heard something about that ...”
“Yes, before it happened, I haven’t a doubt.”
“I did happen to hear Farmer Squibb had a barrel of windfalls that were going bad on him. I hate to see good food wasted, don’t you?”
“Especially at election time! There is another hundred pounds from the Whig coffers down the drain.”
“No, on the platform at the Veterans’ Hall. And he let me have them for twenty-five pounds. But we couldn’t—didn’t—catch any cats.”
She stared at him open-mouthed.
He laughed aloud. “I only said it to shock you. I never have dead cats thrown, for my mama was used to be fond of them. Rats occasionally, but…”
“Oh, that’s worse than cats!”
“Killing them is not worse. Everyone hates rats, and it is usually considered a benevolent act to dispose of them. Don’t tell me you like them?”
“Of course I don’t like them! Nobody does, but that’s no reason .
. . Oh, you should be in chains and fetters, Mr. Hudson.”
“I have an excellent picklock in my retinue, if that contingency should arise.”
“As you never at point non plus?”
“I must confess I very nearly was yesterday. You’ll never guess what little trick Tony played on me.”
“What?” she asked, smiling in anticipation.
“Do you happen to recall our mentioning the other day a certain Sir John Sinclair, who is bankrolling the Tory campaign almost singlehanded?”
“Yes, the one who is going to build the bridge.”
“Oh no, he isn’t! But that is the one I mean all right. I was driving in all my naive innocence to strut Tony before a few scattered houses in the countryside, and he tells me he has a good friend at Ashley Hall—a fine old place, and the dame apparently on terms with him, so we stopped off to make ourselves agreeable, and who should live there but Sir John Sinclair! I thought he’d pull a gun from the wall and shoot us off the premises. He was livid, and who shall blame him! Can you see Alistair and Reising blundering into Allingham’s place? But I blame myself entirely. I ought to have questioned him more closely as to the identity of the mysterious Lady Marie. Her being an earl’s daughter and not using the title Lady Sinclair led me astray. She was once a flirt of Tony’s, if I have the story straight. And what a woman she is—fat and ugly. I was at point non plus. You would have enjoyed to see me.”
“What on earth did you say?”
“I asked for directions to the next farm, Wetterings. I let on we had lost our way, but old Sinclair didn’t know what to make of it and thought we were up to something devious. With Tony simpering at Lady Marie and generally making an ass of himself, I believe he thought we went there bent on flirtation. I heard him lighting into her before we were out the door. Lord, what a day! Well, you learn something new in each campaign.”
“What have you learned in this one?” she asked, laughing in glee at his having been discomposed for once.
“That lovemaking and campaigning are a poor mix.”