Sweet and Twenty (16 page)

“Someone has to. If we leave it to the real crooks, only think what a state the country would be in. I have nothing to gain by it. I’m not after the money—I have that. And I’m not power-hungry or I would have got myself elected a Tory before this. I genuinely believe my party is not so bad as the other. There are some bad men in it, self-seeking men, as there are in any party or church or any other institution. Politics turns a good many honest men off by its reputation, but if the honest men refuse to fight for what they believe is right, what chance has the country? And once you are in a fight, you know, there’s no point pussyfooting around in velvet gloves when your opponent is wielding an ax. You’re either in a fight to win or you stay out. I’m in. For life, I think. When I inherit from my uncle I will be a member of Lords—a much more dignified gentleman altogether, and no longer out ripping barn doors off their hinges—but it is only the details that will change. I’ll still be fighting, using every dirty trick I know to gain a point. You find that unacceptably sordid?”

“It’s nothing to me how you choose to spend your life,”
she answered, waiting with bated breath for a clearer statement of how it should become something to her.

“I’m asking you for an opinion, Miss Watters. Do you find such a life disgusting?”

“Everyone to his taste.”

“What about
your
taste?”

“I never gave it much thought. I don’t foresee that I am likely to be engaged in anything of the sort myself. That is for men to worry about.”

“And men’s families, surely?”
If only he had used the word “wives”
he might have saved himself a great deal of time, but the vague “families”
allowed her to misunderstand.

“Your mother had no objections, in any case.”

He sighed wearily. “Whatever you think, we’ll never know. You are a born politician, so cautious one would think you were already in office. I never heard one yet would admit he was standing where he was, or that it was Monday, or October, or anything else that was perfectly clear to everyone. They must always leave the door open to change their minds and throw in a dozen ‘in certain cases’
and ‘under given circumstances’
and the like. I hope to God I don’t turn into that sort of a mealy-mouthed fellow, who doesn’t stand for anything.”

“You’ve made it pretty clear what you stand for. You stand for getting that clothhead of a Fellows into Parliament, and you will use whatever expedient you must to achieve it. You know perfectly well Alistair is worth ten of him, and you should be ashamed to hold up your head after the way you have carried on.”
All this was the result of his implying she was mealy-mouthed, and his reply to it was largely founded on her praise of Alistair.

“You would be hard put to prove I have harmed anyone. Several of the merchants are better off than they were before.”

“All of them! You didn’t miss anyone with your bribery, did you?”

“I hope not. Crockett is getting a bridge at last.”

“One they will have to pay for every time they want to use it,”

“And don’t forget to tell everyone how frightfully unsafe it is! Who are you taking lessons from, Sara or Alistair?”

“Mr. Alistair, for I find him better informed on all matters than either Sara or Fellows.”

“Or Hudson. What has Mr. Alistair to say about Corporal Winton being given the job of collecting tolls on the bridge? What smear has he worked into that?”

“You will do admirably in Parliament, Mr. Hudson. You whitewash all your black tricks and make a piddling little sinecure seem a matter of importance.”

“Your tongue outruns me; I can’t get the answer to a simple, straightforward question from you. Do you hate what I am doing? Do you dislike it so much you would object to being part of it?”
He looked at her expectantly and somewhat angrily.

“It’s nothing to me how you spend your time and money,”
she answered, but her heart raced and her head was light with the significance of
the question.

He stared at her a moment, then let out a chuckle. “That will teach me to try to make up to a girl with a headache. Think about what I asked you after your migraine has passed away. As soon as you manage to escape me, in other words. That is two things I have given you to think about. You never did come up with a bribe for me to tell you about the bridge, and I told you anyway, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let you off the hook this time. You must make up your own mind about this, Lillian. It would be dishonest of me to tell you I will change, for I don’t think I could. I don’t ask you to change either, if you truly dislike what I am doing. I wish you would try to like it, however,”
he finished up, and her headache was forgotten.

The Armstrong farm was five miles down the road, and
by turning the conversation to the scenery and other innocuous subjects, they completed the trip without another word of interest being said. Mr. Armstrong inhabited a large, square brick home, solid without being in any way luxurious. His wife answered her own door and admitted the callers. She had three young girls in the house with her, daughters who were at an age where they would have been in the schoolroom still had their help not been necessary around the house. Lillian took the mother for a woman in her forties, for her eye was bright in spite of the haggard expression she wore.

She and Hudson sat for a quarter of an hour talking to Mrs. Armstrong without the subject of politics arising at all. By a series of discreet questions it came out that she was perfectly aware her husband was dying, and having come to terms with this, she was quite properly directing her thoughts to keeping her family together. Her eldest son, Isaac, would have to take over the farm, and he was a bookish sort of a lad, not well-equipped for the job. She had a bachelor brother who would be happy to help her, but of course such a man would be an additional expense to the family.

After all this was talked over, Hudson was taken up to see Mr. Armstrong. He descended after ten minutes looking grave, and she didn’t bother with the farce of mentioning a recovery. The back-slapping, joking politician was not in evidence today. Mrs. Armstrong showed them to the door. “Isaac will be in Crockett tomorrow, ma’am?”
Hudson queried just before leaving.

“Yes, he goes every second day to help out at the newspaper office. He’s only twenty-two, but very clever. He does a bit of writing up for them. Very excited he is about the bridge, Mr. Hudson. He says it will be a fine thing for the town.”

This was as close to politicking as they came. “He’s right. Will you tell him I’ll drop in at the office and see him then?”

“He’ll be pleased to meet you,”
she said, smiling on top of her cares. It was a pitiful sight. A strained silence sat in the curricle with its occupants on the way back to New Moon. “Mr. Armstrong is too ill to get out and vote, I presume?”
Lillian asked, as that was the only reason she knew of for the call.

Hudson looked surprised at her question. “He’ll be dead before the week’s out,”
he answered with conviction.

“Poor woman, and she with three young girls to raise, two of them with their hair not up yet. How will she manage?”

“She’ll manage if she has to work her fingers to the bone to do it. That was a lady you just met, Lillian. Don’t let the cotton gown and the apron fool you. I take my hat off to her. It does a ruined soul like myself good to bump into a person like that once in a while. She asks nothing from life but half a chance to take care of herself and her family. If this Isaac is as clever as she thinks, they’ll manage. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, why such a catastrophe should befall them, while the Sinclairs and Fellows and Hudsons of the world go merrily on their way without a hitch?”

The trip home was not lively, but it was not argumentative, at least, and when they reached New Moon, Hudson accepted an invitation to lunch. Tony was there; he and Sara had returned more than an hour ago, but it did not occur to him, apparently, to go out and do anything on his own hook, for which all concerned had reason to be grateful. He was holding Sara’s wools while she wound them into balls, under the Argus eyes of Martha. Hudson outlined the morning he and Lillian had spent.

“Told you it was a waste of time,”
Tony reproached him. “Armstrong will never make it to the polls. At least it won’t be a vote for the Tories.”

Hudson ignored this solecism and began to discuss the heavy load of work Tony would be saddled with once he was elected. His election was now spoken of as quite a certain thing. “And when you’re in London, you will want someone here in your riding to keep an eye on things. Someone to keep you informed.”

Tony glanced at Sara, of all unlikely people. “Mr. Alistair is always well-informed on everything,”
she suggested.

“I meant someone in your employ, to handle your correspondence for you,”
Hudson enlarged.

“Peagoose!”
Martha muttered in the direction of her younger niece, but after an hour in the company of this pair of wise ones, she was not surprised.

“A secretary is what I need,”
Tony decided, elated to be a man of so much consequence.

“Yes, that’s what I meant. Some sharp young fellow to act as a right-hand man for you.”

“How about that Corporal Winton—oh, but he’s got no right arm. I don’t want a left-hand man. Pity I couldn’t give it to a decapitated veteran.”

“It would be preferable, I think, if he had his head about him,”
Hudson said grimly.

“Oh, if it’s head you want, Basingstoke is our man. As longheaded as may be,”
Tony said.

“He lives too far away, and Corporal Winton is to be the toll collector on the Fellows Bridge.”

“So he is. I forgot we’d managed to find a job for the poor soul that he can handle with his one wing.”

“We were fortunate enough to get Winton to take the post,”
Hudson corrected, without much hope that the words would be remembered.

“We
were fortunate! Why, everyone and his mother has been pestering me for the post. He’s the lucky one to get any sort of a job—mutilated and unable to do a real day’s work. It’s the Whigs that did it for him, eh, Matt?”

“That’s right, Tony. About a secretary for you. I hear the young Armstrong fellow is bright. Does a bit of writing for the local paper.”

“Writes such stuff as Miss Jones is gone to Bath to visit her aunt, and Mrs. Purdy is in bed with the gout. He ain’t a real writer.”

“He wrote a pretty fine piece about the Fellows Bridge last week. I mean to ask the paper to send it to London for printing in the
Gazette.”

“Dash it, Matt, you said everything we give away must bring in a vote. We don’t have to get him a job; his father ain’t voting at all.”

“His father isn’t voting because he is dying, and the family is in great difficulty. But that is nothing to the point,”
he added quickly, to prevent the offer being put to Armstrong in this light. “He is a local chap, young and alert. If he will take the job, he is the very one to help you. His working for the local paper is a good circumstance too. I’d let him keep that up as well; he only works there every second day. He would be the perfect answer to your problem.”

“I’ll think it over,”
Fellows stated importantly.

“You should interview him. He’ll be at the newspaper office tomorrow,”
Hudson mentioned.

Conducting an interview sounded a pleasant and consequential pastime, and Fellows agreed to it with no difficulty. When the two of them were alone, Hudson continued to pound into his head the need for a secretary and the advantage of having a secretary in a position to insert complimentary pieces in the local paper. By the time the call was paid, Fellows was eager to engage Mr. Armstrong and didn’t say much in the way of unwitting insult, except that he was glad to be able to give him a hand, even if he wasn’t a veteran, and how did it come he’d shied away from the war anyway—he a strapping young man of one hundred and ten pounds, wearing thick glasses.

It was the very day after they hired Isaac Armstrong that his father died, but this fact was overborne by a much worse one for the Whigs. Hudson’s first inkling of it occurred in the village. He was with Mr. Fellows, again visiting the open market stalls, when Reising and Alistair were seen across the way, in more cheerful humor than they had been in since the coming to Crockett of the bridge and Colonel Dorking.

“What have that pair got to grin about?”
Hudson asked uneasily.

“They are putting a good face on their defeat,”
Tony told him, this having been drummed into his head as a necessary thing when it seemed he would be the defeated candidate. It seemed the likely reason, for the cheering mob that used to trail at Alistair’s heels was now at Tony’s. He was already being treated as the member for the riding, with citizens beginning to come to him with their problems for advice and help.

Hudson had been through many campaigns with Reising, and he thought the gloating face of his old rival denoted more than acquiescence to defeat. Reising was a notably poor loser. Hudson had been waiting for reprisals ever since the coming of Telford, had even been a little uneasy at the lack of them, for he knew Reising was a sly old fox who would stick at nothing. He began to edge his way toward the Tory pair, a thing Reising would normally have welcomed, as it brought the mob into a position where they might be taken to be huddling around Alistair. But on this occasion Reising kept moving away.

“There’s something amiss,”
Hudson fretted. “Tony, did anything happen yesterday when you took Sara down to the bridge?”

“Yes, by Jove. Alistair was there making up to Sara something awful.”
This had been a bit of a problem from the beginning, for the attraction between them was no secret to anyone. But still Hudson could not see why this should set Reising to gloating, and if anything notable had happened, he believed he would have heard of it before now.

“What exactly went on?”

“They was both putting down my bridge, Sara saying it wasn’t safe and Alistair griping about the tolls, and he as rich as a nabob. He can walk across if he don’t want to pay the toll, and I won’t charge him a penny, and so I told him too.”