BEN BOSHAM
It was Tuesday, market-day at Riddsley, and farmers’ wives, cackling as
loudly as the poultry they carried, elbowed one another on the brick
pavements or clustered before the windows of the low-browed shops.
Farmers in white great-coats, with huge handkerchiefs about their
necks, streamed from the yards of the Packhorse and the Barley Mow, and
meeting a friend planted themselves in the roadway as firmly as if they
stood in their own pastures. Now and again a young spark, fancying all
eyes upon his four-year-old, sidled through the throng with many a
“Whoa!” and “Where be’st going, lad?” While on the steps of the
Market-Cross and about the long line of carts that rested on their
shafts in the open street, hucksters chaffered and house-wives haggled
over the rare egg or the keg of salted butter.
The quacking of ducks, the neighing of horses, the singsong of rustic
voices filled the streets. It was common talk that the place was as
full as at the March Fair. The excitement of the Election had gone
abroad, the cry that the land was at stake had brought in some, others
had come to see what was afoot. Many a stout tenant was here who at
other times left the marketing to his womenfolk; and shrewd glances he
cast at the gentry, as he edged past the justices who lounged before
the Audley Arms and killed in gossip the interval between the
Magistrates’ Meeting, at which they had just assisted, and the Ordinary
at which they were to support young Mottisfont.
The great men talked loudly and eagerly, were passionate, were in
earnest. Occasionally one of the younger of them would step aside to
look at a passing hackney, or an older man would speak to a favorite
tenant whom he called by his first name. But, for the most part, they
clung together, fine upstanding figures, in high-collared riding-coats
and top-boots. They were keen to a man; the farmers keen also, but not
so keen. For the argument that high wheat meant high rents, and that
most of the benefits of protection went to the landlords had got about
even in Riddsley. The squires complained that the farmers would only
wake up when it was too late!
Still in such a place, and on market-day, four out of five were in the
landed interest; four-fifths of the squires, four-fifths of the
parsons, almost four-fifths of the tenants; for the laborers, no one
asked what they thought of it—they had ten shillings a week and no
votes. “Peel—’od rot him!” cried the majority, “might shift as often as
his own spinning-jenny! But not they! No Manchester man, and no
Tamworth man either, should teach them their business! Who would die if
there were no potatoes? It was a flam, a bite, but it wouldn’t
bamboozle Stafford farmers!”
Meanwhile Stubbs, moving quietly through the throng, spoke with one
here and there. He had the same word for all. “Listen to me, John,” he
would say, his hand on the yeoman’s shoulder. “Peel says he’s been
wrong all these years and is only right now. Then, if you believe him,
he’s a fool; and if you don’t believe him, he’s a knave. Not a very
good vet., John, eh? Not the vet. for the old gray mare, eh?”
This had a great effect. John went away and repeated it to himself, and
presently grasped the dilemma and chuckled over it. Ten minutes later
he imparted it, with the air of a Solomon, to the “Duke,” who mouthed
it and liked it and rolled it off to the first he met. It went the
round of the inns and about four o’clock a farmer fresh from the “tap”
put it to Stubbs and convinced him; and that night men, travelling home
market-peart in the charge of their wives, bore it to many a snug
homestead set in orchards of hard cider apples.
Had the issue of the Election lain with the Market, indeed, it had been
over. But of the hundred and ninety voters no more than fifteen were
farmers, and though the main trade of the town sided with them, the two
factories were in opposition; and cheap bread had its charms for the
lesser fry. But the free traders were too wise to flaunt their views on
market-day, and it was left for little Ben Bosham, whose vote was
pretty near his all, to distinguish himself in the matter.
He, too, had been at the tap, and about noon his voice was heard
issuing from a group who stood near the Audley Arms. “Be I free, or
bain’t I?” he bawled. “Answer me that, Mr. Bagenal!”
A knot of farmers had edged him into a corner and were disposed to bait
him. A stubby figure in a velveteen coat and drab breeches, his hand on
an ash-plant, he held his ground among them, tickled by the attention
he excited and fired by his own importance. “Be I free, or bain’t I?”
he repeated.
“Free?” Bagenal answered contemptuously. “You be free to make a fool of
yourself, Ben! I’m thinking you’d ha’ us all lay down the ground to
lazy pasture and live by milk, as you do!”
“Milk?” ejaculated a stout man of many acres, whose contempt for such
traffic was above speech.
“You’ll be free to go out of Bridge End,” cried a third. “That’s what
you’ll be free to do! And where’ll your vote be then, Ben?”
But there Bosham was sure of himself. “That’s where you be wrong, Mr.
Willet,” he retorted with gusto. “My vote dunno come o’ my landlord,
and in the Bridge End or out of the Bridge End, I’ve a vote while I’ve
a breath! ’Tain’t the landlord’s vote, and why’d I give it to he? Free
I be—not like you, begging your pardon! Freeman, old freeman, I be, of
this borough! Freeman by marriage!”
“Then you be a very rare thing!” Bagenal retorted slyly. “There’s a
many lose their freedom that way, but you be the first I ever heard of
that got it!”
“And a hard bargain, too, as I hear,” said Willet.
This drew a roar of laughter. The crowd grew thicker and the little
man’s temper grew short, for his wife was no beauty. He began to see
that they were playing with him.
“You leave me alone, Mr. Willet,” he said angrily, “and I’ll leave you
alone!”
“Leave thee alone!” said the farmer who had turned up his nose at milk.
“So I would, same as any other lump o’ dirt! But yo’ don’t let us. Yo’
set up to know more than your betters! Pity the old lord ain’t alive to
put his stick about your back!”
“Did it smart, Ben?” cried a lad who had poked himself in between his
betters.
“You let me catch you,” Ben cried, “and I’ll make you smart. You be all
a set of slaves! You’d set your thatch afire if squires’d tell you! Set
o’ slaves, set o’ slaves you be!”
“And what be you, Bosham?” said a man who had just joined the group.
“Head of the men, bain’t you? Cheap bread and high wages, that’s your
line, ain’t it!”
“That’s his line, be it?” said the old farmer slowly. “Bit of a rascal
it seems yo’ be? Don’t yo’ let me find you in my boosey pasture talking
to no men o’ mine, or I’ll make yo’ smart a sight more than his
lordship did!”
“Ay, that’s Ben’s line,” said the new-comer.
“You’re a liar!” Ben shrieked. “A dommed liar you be! I see you not
half an hour agone coming out of Stubbs’s office! I know who told you
to say that, you varmint! I’ll have the law of you!”
“Ben Bosham, the laborers’ friend!” the man retorted.
Ben was furious, for he was frightened. There was no feud so bitter in
the ’forties as the feud between farmer and laborer. The laborer had no
vote, he had lost his common rights, his wood, his cow-feed; he was
famished, he was crushed by the new Poor Law, and so he was often in an
ugly mood, as singed barns and burning stacks went to show. Bosham knew
that he might flout the squires, and at worst be turned out of his
holding; but woe betide him if he got the name of the laborers’ friend.
Moreover, there was just so much truth in the accusation as made it
dangerous. Ben and his brother eked out the profits of the dairy by
occasional labor, and Ben had sometimes vapored in tap-rooms where he
had better have held his tongue. He shrieked furiously, therefore, at
the false witness, and even tried to reach him with his ash-plant. “Who
be you?” he screamed. “You be a lawyer’s pup, you be! You’d ruin me,
you would! Let me get a hold of you and I’ll put a mark on you! You be
lying!”
“I don’t know about that,” said the big farmer slowly and weightily.
“I’m feared yo’re a bit of a rascal, Ben.”
“Ay, and fine he’ll look in front of Stafford Gaol some morning!” said
Willet. “At the end of a rope.”
On that in a happy moment for Ben, while he gaped for a retort and
found none, two carriers’ vans, huge wooden vehicles festooned with
rabbits and market-baskets and drawn by three horses abreast, lumbered
through the crowd and scattered it. In a twinkling Ben was left alone,
an angry man, aware that he had cut but a poor figure!
He had been frightened, too, and he resented it. He thirsted for some
chance of setting himself right, of proving to others that he was a
freeman and not as other men. And in the nick of time he saw a
chance—if only he had the courage to rise to it. He saw moving towards
him through the press a mail-phaeton and pair. On the box, caped and
gloved, the pink of fashion, sat no less a person than his lordship
himself. A servant in the well-known livery, a white coat with a blue
collar, sat behind him.
The vans which had freed Ben blocked the great man’s way, and he was
moving at a walk. All heads were bared as he passed, and he was
acknowledging the courtesy with his whip when Ben stepped before the
horses and lifted his hand. In an instant a hundred eyes were on the
man and he knew that he had burned his boats. Bravado was now his only
chance.
“My lord,” he cried, waving his hat impudently. “I want to know what
you be going to do about me?”
My lord hardly caught his words and did not catch his meaning, but he
saw that the man was almost under the horses’ feet and he checked them.
Ben stood aside then but, as the carriage passed him, he laid his hand
on the splashboard and walked beside it. He looked up at the great man
and in the same impudent tone, “Be you agoing to turn me out, my lord?”
he cried. “That’s what I want to know.”
“I don’t understand you,” Audley said coldly. He guessed that the man
referred to the Election, and what was the use of understrappers like
Stubbs if he was to be exposed to this?
“I’m Ben Bosham of the Bridge End, my lord, that’s who I be,” Ben
replied brazenly. “I’m not ashamed of my name. I want to know whether
you be agoing to turn me out, and my wife and my child! That’s what I
want to——”
Then a farmer seized him and dragged him back, and others laid hands on
him, though he still shouted. “Dunno be a fool!” cried the farmer,
deeply shocked. “Drive on, drive on, my lord! Never heed him. He’ve had
a glass too much!”
“Packhorse beer, my lord,” explained a second in stentorian
tones—though he knew that Ben was fairly sober. “Ought to be ashamed of
himself!” cried a third, and he shook the aggressor. Ben was in a
minority of one, and those who held him were inclined to be rough.
Audley waved his whip good-humoredly. “Take care of him!” he said.
“Don’t hurt him!” And he drove on, outwardly unmoved though inwardly
fuming. Still had it ended there little harm would have been done. But
word of the brawl outran the carriage and, as it chanced, reached the
door of Hatton’s Works as the men came out to dinner. Ben Bosham had
spoken his mind to his lordship! His lordship had driven over him! The
farmers had beaten him! The news passed from one to another like flame,
and the hands stood, some two score of them, and hooted my lord loudly,
shouting “Shame!” and jeering at him.
Now had Audley been the candidate he would have thought nothing of it.
He would have laughed in the men’s faces and taken it as part of the
day’s work; or had he been the old lord, he would have flung a curse at
the men and cut at the nearest with his whip—and forgotten it.
But he was not the old lord, times were changed, and the thing angered
him. It was in an ill-temper that he drove on along the road that rose
by gentle degrees to the Great Chase.
For the matter of that, he had been in a black mood for some time,
because he could not make up his mind. Night and morning ambition
whispered to him to put the vessel about; to steer the course which
experience told him that it behooved a man to steer who was not steeped
in romance, nor too greedy for the moment’s enjoyment; the course
which, beyond all doubt, he would have steered were he now starting!
But he was not starting; and when he thought of shifting the helm he
foresaw difficulties. He did not think that he was a soft-hearted man,
yet he feared that when it came to the point he would flinch. Besides,
he told himself that he was a man of honor; and the change was a little
at odds with this. But there again, he reflected that truth was honor
and in the end would cause less pain.
Eight thousand pounds was so very small a portion! And for safety, he
no longer needed to play for it. John Audley was dead and the Bible was
in his hands; his case was beyond cavil or question, while the
political situation was such that he saw no opening, no chance of
enrichment in that direction. To make Mary, handsome, good, attractive
as she was—to make her the wife of a poor peer, of a discontented,
dissatisfied man—this, if he could only find it in his heart to tell
her the truth, would be a cruel kindness.
As he drove along the road, angry with the wretched Bosham, angry with
Stubbs, angry with the fools who had hooted him, he was not sorry to
feel his ill-temper increase. He might not find it so difficult to
speak to her. A little effort and the thing would be done. Eight
thousand pounds? The interest would barely dress her. Whereas, if she
had played her cards well and been heir to her uncle’s thirty
thousand—the case would have been different. After all, the fault lay
with her.
He roused the off-horse with a sharp cut, and a moment later discerned
at the end of a long, straight piece of road, the moss-clad steps of
the old Cross and standing beside them a figure he knew.
He was moved, even while, in his irritation, he was annoyed that she
had come to meet him at a place that had recollections for him. It
seemed to him that in doing this she was putting an undue, an unfair
burden on him.
She waved her hand and he raised his hat. The day was bright and cold,
and the east wind had whipped a fine color into her cheeks. Perhaps
that, too, was unfair. Perhaps that too was putting an undue burden on
him.