"Yes, one tires of that," said Mrs. Lespel. "I was determined I would have him here if we could get him to come. Grancey objected. We shall have to manage Captain Beauchamp and the rest as well. He is sure to come late to-morrow, and will leave early on Thursday morning for his canva.s.s; our driving into Bevisham is for Friday or Sat.u.r.day. I do not see that he need have any suspicions. Those verses you are so angry about cannot be traced to Itchincope. My dear, they are a childish trifle. When my husband stood first for Bevisham, the whole of his University life appeared in print. What we have to do is to forewarn the gentlemen to be guarded, and especially in what they say to my nephew Lord Palmet, for that boy cannot keep a secret; he is as open as a plate."
"The smoking-room at night?" Cecilia suggested, remembering her father"s words about Itchincope"s tobacco-hall.
"They have Captain Beauchamp"s address hung up there, I have heard,"
said Mrs. Lespel. "There may be other things--another address, though it is not yet, placarded. Come with me. For fifteen years I have never once put my head into that room, and now I "ve a superst.i.tious fear about it."
Mrs. Lespel led the way to the deserted smoking-room, where the stale reek of tobacco a.s.sailed the ladies, as does that dire place of Customs the stranger visiting savage (or too natural) potentates.
In silence they tore down from the wall Beauchamp"s electoral Address--flanked all its length with satirical pen and pencil comments and sketches; and they consigned to flames the vast sheet of animated verses relating to the FRENCH MARQUEES. A quarter-size chalk-drawing of a slippered pantaloon having a duck on his shoulder, labelled to say "Quack-quack," and offering our nauseated Dame Britannia (or else it was the widow Bevisham) a globe of a pill to swallow, crossed with the consolatory and rea.s.suring name of Shrapnel, they disposed of likewise.
And then they fled, chased forth either by the brilliancy of the politically allusive epigrams profusely inscribed around them on the walls, or by the atmosphere. Mrs. Lespel gave her orders for the walls to be sc.r.a.ped, and said to Cecilia: "A strange air to breathe, was it not? The less men and women know of one another, the happier for them. I knew my superst.i.tion was correct as a guide to me. I do so much wish to respect men, and all my experience tells me the Turks know best how to preserve it for us. Two men in this house would give their wives for pipes, if it came to the choice. We might all go for a cellar of old wine. After forty, men have married their habits, and wives are only an item in the list, and not the most important."
With the a.s.sistance of Mr. Stukely Culbrett, Mrs. Lespel prepared the house and those of the company who were in the secret of affairs for the arrival of Beauchamp. The ladies were curious to see him. The gentlemen, not antic.i.p.ating extreme amus.e.m.e.nt, were calm: for it is an axiom in the world of buckskins and billiard-cues, that one man is very like another; and so true is it with them, that they can in time teach it to the fair s.e.x. Friends of Cecil Baskelett predominated, and the absence of so sprightly a fellow was regretted seriously; but he was shooting with his uncle at Holdesbury, and they did not expect him before Thursday.
On Wednesday morning Lord Palmet presented himself at a remarkably well-attended breakfast-table at Itchincope. He pa.s.sed from Mrs. Lespel to Mrs. Wardour-Devsreux and Miss Halkett, bowed to other ladies, shook hands with two or three men, and nodded over the heads of half-a-dozen, accounting rather mysteriously for his delay in coming, it was thought, until he sat down before a plate of Yorkshire pie, and said:
"The fact is I"ve been canva.s.sing hard. With Beauchamp!"
Astonishment and laughter surrounded him, and Palmet looked from face to face, equally astonished, and desirous to laugh too.
"Ernest! how could you do that?" said Mrs. Lespel; and her husband cried in stupefaction, "With Beauchamp?"
"Oh! it"s because of the Radicalism," Palmet murmured to himself. "I didn"t mind that."
"What sort of a day did you have?" Mr. Culbrett asked him; and several gentlemen fell upon him for an account of the day.
Palmet grimaced over a mouthful of his pie.
"Bad!" quoth Mr. Lespel; "I knew it. I know Bevisham. The only chance there is for five thousand pounds in a sack with a hole in it."
"Bad for Beauchamp? Dear me, no"; Palmet corrected the error. "He is carrying all before him. And he tells them," Palmet mimicked Beauchamp, "they shall not have one penny: not a farthing. I gave a couple of young ones a shilling apiece, and he rowed me for bribery; somehow I did wrong."
Lord Palmet described the various unearthly characters he had inspected in their dens: Carpendike, Tripehallow, and the radicals Peter Molyneux and Samuel Killick, and the ex-member for the borough, Cougham, posing to suit sign-boards of Liberal inns, with a hand thrust in his waistcoat, and his head well up, the eyes running over the under-lids, after the traditional style of our aristocracy; but perhaps more closely resembling an urchin on tiptoe peering above park-palings. Cougham"s remark to Beauchamp, heard and repeated by Palmet with the object of giving an example of the senior Liberal"s phraseology: "I was necessitated to vacate my town mansion, to my material discomfort and that of my wife, whose equipage I have been compelled to take, by your premature canva.s.s of the borough, Captain Beauchamp: and now, I hear, on undeniable authority, that no second opponent to us will be forthcoming"---this produced the greatest effect on the company.
"But do you tell me," said Mr. Lespel, when the shouts of the gentlemen were subsiding, "do you tell me that young Beauchamp is going ahead?"
"That he is. They flock to him in the street."
"He stands there, then, and jingles a money-bag."
Palmet resumed his mimicry of Beauchamp: "Not a stiver; purity of election is the first condition of instruction to the people!
Principles! Then they"ve got a capital orator: Turbot, an Irishman. I went to a meeting last night, and heard him; never heard anything finer in my life. You may laugh he whipped me off my legs; fellow spun me like a top; and while he was orationing, a donkey calls, "Turbot! ain"t you a flat fish?" and he swings round, "Not for a fool"s hook!" and out they hustled the villain for a Tory. I never saw anything like it."
"That repartee wouldn"t have done with a Dutchman or a Torbay trawler,"
said Stukely Culbrett. "But let us hear more."
"Is it fair?" Miss Halkett murmured anxiously to Mrs. Lespel, who returned a flitting shrug.
"Charming women follow Beauchamp, you know," Palmet proceeded, as he conceived, to confirm and heighten the tale of success. "There"s a Miss Denham, niece of a doctor, a Dr.... Shot--Shrapnel! a wonderfully good-looking, clever-looking girl, comes across him in half-a-dozen streets to ask how he"s getting on, and goes every night to his meetings, with a man who "s a writer and has a mad wife; a man named Lydia-no, that"s a woman--Lydiard. It"s rather a jumble; but you should see her when Beauchamp"s on his legs and speaking."
"Mr. Lydiard is in Bevisham?" Mrs. Wardour-Devereux remarked.
"I know the girl," growled Mr. Lespel. "She comes with that rascally doctor and a bobtail of tea-drinking men and women and their brats to Northeden Heath--my ground. There they stand and sing."
"Hymns?"inquired Mr. Culbrett.
"I don"t know what they sing. And when it rains they take the liberty to step over my bank into my plantation. Some day I shall have them stepping into my house."
"Yes, it"s Mr. Lydiard; I"m sure of the man"s name," Palmet replied to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.
"We met him in Spain the year before last," she observed to Cecilia.
The "we" reminded Palmet that her husband was present.
"Ah, Devereux, I didn"t see you," he nodded obliquely down the table.
"By the way, what"s the grand procession? I hear my man Davis has come all right, and I caught sight of the top of your coach-box in the stableyard as I came in. What are we up to?"
"Baskelett writes, it"s to be for to-morrow morning at ten-the start."
Mr. Wardour-Devereux addressed the table generally. He was a fair, huge, bush-bearded man, with a voice of unvarying ba.s.s: a squire in his county, and energetic in his pursuit of the pleasures of hunting, driving, travelling, and tobacco.
"Old Bask"s the captain of us? Very well, but where do we drive the teams? How many are we? What"s in hand?"
Cecilia threw a hurried glance at her hostess.
Luckily some witling said, "Fours-in-hand!" and so dryly that it pa.s.sed for humour, and gave Mrs. Lespel time to interpose. "You are not to know till to-morrow, Ernest."
Palmet had traced the authorship of the sally to Mr. Algy Borolick, and crowned him with praise for it. He asked, "Why not know till to-morrow?"
A word in a murmur from Mr. Culbrett, "Don"t frighten the women,"
satisfied him, though why it should he could not have imagined.
Mrs. Lespel quitted the breakfast-table before the setting in of the dangerous five minutes of conversation over its ruins, and spoke to her husband, who contested the necessity for secresy, but yielded to her judgement when it was backed by Stukely Culbrett. Soon after Lord Palmet found himself encountered by evasions and witticisms, in spite of the absence of the ladies, upon every attempt he made to get some light regarding the destination of the four-in-hands next day.
"What are you going to do?" he said to Mr. Devereux, thinking him the likeliest one to grow confidential in private.
"Smoke," resounded from the depths of that gentleman.
Palmet recollected the ground of division between the beautiful brunette and her lord--his addiction to the pipe in perpetuity, and deemed it sweeter to be with the lady.
She and Miss Halkett were walking in the garden.
Miss Halkett said to him: "How wrong of you to betray the secrets of your friend! Is he really making way?"
"Beauchamp will head the poll to a certainty," Palmet replied.
"Still," said Miss Halkett, "you should not forget that you are not in the house of a Liberal. Did you canva.s.s in the town or the suburbs?"
"Everywhere. I a.s.sure you, Miss Halkett, there"s a feeling for Beauchamp--they"re in love with him!"
"He promises them everything, I suppose?"