THE MEETING AT THE MAYPOLE
Within twenty-four hours there were signs that Bosham’s brush with his
lordship and the show of feeling outside Hatton’s Works had set a
sharper edge on the fight. Trifles as these were, the farmers about
Riddsley took them up and resented them. The feudal feeling was not
quite extinct. Their landlord was still a great man to them, and even
those who did not love him believed that he was fighting their battle.
An insult to him seemed, in any case, a portent, but that such a poor
creature as Bosham—Ben Bosham of the Bridge End—should insult him, went
beyond bearing.
Moreover, it was beginning to be whispered that Ben was tampering with
the laborers. One heard that he was preaching higher wages in the
public houses, another that he was asking Hodge what he got out of dear
bread, a third that he was vaporing about commons and enclosures. The
farmers growled. The farmers’ sons began to talk together outside the
village inn. The farmers’ wives foresaw rick-burning, maimed cattle,
and empty hen coops, and said that they could not sleep in their beds
for Ben.
Meanwhile those who, perhaps, knew something of the origin of these
rumors, and could size up the Boshams to a pound, were not unwilling to
push the matter farther. Men who fancied with Stubbs that repeal of the
corn-taxes meant the ruin of the country-side, were too much in earnest
to pick and choose. They believed that this was a fight between the
wholesome country and the black, sweating town, between the open life
of the fields and the tyranny of mill and pit; and that the only aim of
the repealer was to lower wages, and so to swell the profits that
already enabled him to outshine the lords of the soil. They were prone,
therefore, to think that any stick was good enough to beat so bad a
dog, and if the stout arms of the farmers could redress the balance,
they were in no mood to refuse their help.
Nor were sharpeners wanting on the other side. The methods of the
League were brought into play. Women were sent out to sing through the
streets of an evening, and the townsfolk ate their muffins to the
doleful strains of:
Child, is thy father dead?
Father is gone.
Why did they tax his bread?
God’s will be done!
And as there were enthusiasts on this side, too, who saw the work of
the Corn Laws in the thin cheeks of children and the coffins of babes,
the claims of John Barley-corn, roared from the windows of the
Portcullis and the Packhorse, did not seem a convincing answer. A big
loaf and a little loaf, carried high through the streets, made a wide
appeal to non-voters; and a banner with, “You be taxing, we be
starving!” had its success. Then, on the evening of the market-day, a
band of Hatton’s men, fresh from the Three Tailors, came to blows with
a market-peart farmer, and a “hand” was not only knocked down, but
locked up. Hatton’s and Banfield’s men were fired with indignation at
this injustice, and Hatton himself said a little more at the Institute
than Basset thought prudent.
These things had their effect, and more, perhaps, than was expected.
For Stubbs, going back to his office one afternoon, suffered an
unpleasant shock. Bosham’s impudence had not moved him, nor the jeers
of Hatton’s men. But this turned out to be another matter. Farthingale,
the shabby clerk with the high-bred nose, had news for him which he
kept until the office door was locked. And the news was so bad that
Stubbs stood aghast.
“What? All nine?” he cried. “Impossible, man! The woman’s made a fool
of you!”
But Farthingale merely looked at him over his steel-rimmed spectacles.
“It’s true,” he said.
“I’ll never believe it!” cried the lawyer.
Farthingale shook his head. “That won’t alter it,” he said patiently.
“It’s true.”
“Dyas the butcher! Why, he served me for years! For years! I go to him
at times now.”
“Only for veal,” replied the clerk, who knew everything “Pitt, of the
sausage shop, and Badger, the tripeman, are in his pocket—buy his
offal. With the other six, it’s mainly the big loaf—Lake has a sister
with seven children, and Thomas a father in the almshouse. Two more
have big families, and the women have got hold of them!”
“But they’ve always voted right!” Stubbs urged, with a sinking heart.
“What’s taken them?”
“If you ask me,” the clerk answered, “I should say it was partly Squire
Basset—he talks straight and it takes. And partly the split. When a
party splits you can’t expect to keep all. I doubted Dyas from the
first. He’s the head. They were all at his house last night and a prime
supper he gave them.”
Stubbs groaned. At last, “How much?” he asked.
Farthingale shook his head. “Nix,” he said. “You may be shaking Dyas’s
hand and find it’s Hatton’s. If you take my advice, you’ll leave it
alone.”
“Well,” the lawyer cried, “of all the d—d ingratitude I ever heard of!
The money Dyas has had from me!”
Farthingale’s lips framed the words “only veal,” but no sound came.
Devoted as he was to his employer, he was enjoying himself. Election
times were meat and drink—especially drink—to him. At such times his
normal wage was royally swollen by Election extras, such as: “To
addressing one hundred circulars, one guinea. To folding and closing
the same, half a guinea. To watering the same, half a guinea. To
posting the same, half a guinea.” A whole year’s score, chalked up
behind the door at the Portcullis, vanished as by magic at this season.
And then he loved the importance of it, and the secrecy, and the
confidence that was placed in him and might safely be placed. The
shabby clerk who had greased many a palm was himself above bribes.
But Stubbs was aghast. Scarcely could he keep panic at bay. He had
staked his reputation for sagacity on the result. He had made himself
answerable for success, to his lordship, to the candidate, to the
party. Not once, but twice, he had declared in secret council that
defeat was impossible—impossible! Had he not done so, the contest,
which his own side had invited, might have been avoided.
And then, too, his heart was in the matter. He honestly believed that
these poor creatures, these weaklings whose defection might cost so
much, were voting for the ruin of their children, for the
impoverishment of the town. They would live to see the land pass into
the hands of men who would live on it, not by it. They would live to
see the farmers bankrupt, the country undersold, the town a desert!
The lawyer had counted on a safe majority of twenty-two on a register
of a hundred and ninety voters. And twenty-two had seemed a buckler,
sufficient against all the shafts and all the spite of fortune. But a
majority of four—for that was all that remained if these nine went
over—a majority of four was a thing to pale the cheek. Perspiration
stood on his brow as he thought of it. His hand shook as he shuffled
the papers on his desk, looking for he knew not what. For a moment he
could not face even Farthingale, he could not command his eye or his
voice.
At last, “Who could get at Dyas?” he muttered.
Farthingale pondered for a time, but shook his head. “No one,” he said.
“You might try Hayward if you like. They deal.”
“What’s to be done, then?”
“There’s only one way that I can think of,” the clerk replied, his eyes
on his master’s face. “Rattle them! Set the farmers on them! Show them
that what they’re doing will be taken ill. Show ’em we’re in earnest.
Badger’s a poor creature and Thomas’s wife’s never off the twitter. I’d
try it, if I were you. You’d pull some back.”
They talked for a time in low voices and before he went into the
Portcullis that night Farthingale ordered a gig to be ready at
daylight.
It might have been thought that with this unexpected gain, Basset would
be in clover. But he, too, had his troubles and vexations. John
Audley’s death and Mary’s loneliness had made drafts on his time as
well as on his heart. For a week he had almost withdrawn from the
contest, and when he returned to it it was to find that the extreme
men—as is the way of extreme men—had been active. In his address and in
his speeches he had declared himself a follower of Peel. He had posed
as ready to take off the corn-tax to meet an emergency, but not as
convinced that free trade was always and everywhere right. He had
striven to keep the question of Irish famine to the front, and had
constantly stated that that which moved his mind was the impossibility
of taxing food in one part of the country while starvation reigned in
another. Above all, he had tried to convey to his hearers his notion of
Peel. He had pictured the statesman’s dilemma as facts began to coerce
him. He had showed that in the same position many would have preferred
party to country and consistency to patriotism. He had painted the
struggle which had taken place in the proud man’s mind. He had praised
the decision to which Peel had come, to sacrifice his name, his credit,
and his popularity to his country’s good.
But when Basset returned to his Committee Room, he found that the men
to whom Free Trade was the whole truth, and to whom nothing else was
the truth, had stolen a march on him. They had said much which he would
not have said. They had set up Cobden where he had set up Peel. To
crown all, they had arranged an open-air meeting, and invited a man
from Lancashire—whose name was a red rag to the Tories—to speak at it.
Basset was angry, but he could do nothing. He had an equal distaste for
the man and the meeting, but his supporters, elated by their prospects,
were neither to coax nor hold. For a few hours he thought of retiring.
But to do so at the eleventh hour would not only expose him to obloquy
and injure the cause, but it would condemn him to an inaction from
which he shrank.
For all that he had seen of Mary, and all that he had done for her, had
left him only the more restless and more unhappy. To one in such a mood
success, which began to seem possible, promised something—a new sphere,
new interests, new friends. In the hurly-burly of the House and amid
the press of business, the wound that pained him would heal more
quickly than in the retirement of Blore; where the evenings would be
long and lonely, and many a time Mary’s image would sit beside his fire
and regret would gnaw at his heart.
The open-air meeting was to be held at the Maypole, in the wide street
bordered by quaint cottages, that served the town for a cattle-market.
The day turned out to be mild for the season, the meeting was a
novelty, and a few minutes before three the Committee began to assemble
in strength at the Institute, which stood no more than a hundred yards
from the Maypole, but in another street. Hatton was entertaining
Brierly, the speaker from Lancashire, and in making him known to the
candidate, betrayed a little too plainly that he thought that he had
scored a point.
“You’ll see something new now, sir,” he said, rubbing his hands.
“What’s wanting, he’ll win! He’s addressed as many as four thousand
persons at one time, Mr. Brierly has!”
“Ay, and not such as are here, Squire,” Brierly boomed. He was a tall,
bulky man with an immense chin, who moved his whole body when he turned
his head. “Not country clods, but Lancashire men! No throwing dust i’
their eyes!”
“Still, I hope you’ll deal with us gently,” Basset said. “Strong meat,
Mr. Brierly, is not for babes. We must walk before we can run.”
“Nay, but the emptier the stomach, the more need o’ meat!” Brierly
replied, and he rumbled with laughter. “An’ a bellyful I’ll give them!
Truth’s truth and I’m no liar!”
“But to different minds the same words do not convey the same thing,”
Basset urged.
The man stared over his stiff neck-cloth. “That’ud not go down i’
Todmorden,” he said. “Nor i’ Burnley nor i’ Bolton! We’re down-right
chaps up North, and none for chopping words. Hands off the hands’ loaf,
is Lancashire gospel, and we’re out to preach it! We’re out to preach
it, and them that clems folk and fats pheasants may make what mouth
o’er it they like!”
Fortunately the order to start came at this moment, and Basset had to
fall in and move forward with Hatton, the chairman of the day. Banfield
followed with the stranger, and the rest of the Committee came on two
by two, the smaller men enjoying the company in which they found
themselves. So they marched solemnly into the street, a score of
Hatton’s men forming a guard of honor, and a long tail of the riff-raff
of the town falling in behind with orange flags and favors. These at a
certain signal set up a shrill cheer, a band struck up “See, the
Conquering Hero Comes!” and the sixteen gentlemen marched, some proudly
and some shamefacedly, into the wider street, wherein a cart drawn up
at the foot of the Maypole awaited them.
On such occasions Englishmen out of uniform do not show well. The
daylight streamed without pity on the Committee as they stalked or
shambled along in their Sunday clothes, and Basset at least felt the
absurdity of the position. With the tail of his eye he discerned that
the stranger was taking off a large white hat, alternately to the right
and left, in acknowledgment of the cheers of the crowd, while ominous
sniggers of laughter mingled here and there with the applause.
Banfield’s men, with another hundred or so of the town idlers, were
gathered about the cart, but of the honest and intelligent voters there
were scanty signs.
The crowd greeted the appearance of each of the principals with cheers
and a shaft or two of Stafford wit.
“Hooray! Hooray!” shouted Hatton’s men as he climbed into the cart.
“Hatton’s a great man now!” a bass voice threw in.
“But he’s never lost his taste for tripe!” squeaked a shrill treble.
The gibe won roars of laughter, and the back of the chairman’s neck
grew crimson.
“Hurrah for Banfield and the poor man’s loaf!” shouted his supporters,
as he mounted in his turn.
“It’s little of the crumb he’ll leave the poor man!” squeaked the
treble.
It was the candidate’s turn to mount next. “Hooray! Hooray!” shouted
the crowd with special fervor. Handkerchiefs were waved from windows,
the band played a little more of the Conquering Hero.
As the music ceased, “What’s he doing, Tommy, along o’ these chaps?”
asked the treble voice.
“He’s waiting for that there Samaritan, Sammy?” answered the bass.
“Ay, ay? And the wine and oil, Sammy?”
It took the crowd a little time to digest this, but in time they did
so, and the gust of laughter that followed covered the appearance of
the stranger. He was not to escape, however, for as the noise ceased,
“Is this the Samaritan, Sammy?” asked the bass.
“Where’s your eyes?” whined the treble. “He’s the big loaf! and, lor,
ain’t he crumby!”
“If I were down there——” the Burnley man began, leaning over the side
of the cart.
“He’s crusty, too!” cried the wit.
But this was too much for the chairman. “Silence! Silence!” he cried,
and, as at a signal, there was a rush, the two interrupters were seized
and, surrounded by a gang of hobbledehoys, were hustled down the road,
fighting furiously and shouting, “Blues! Blues!”
The chairman made use of the lull to step to the edge of the cart and
take off his hat. He looked about him, pompous and important.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “free and independent electors of our ancient
borough! At a crisis such as this, a crisis the most momentous—the most
momentous——” he paused and looked into his hat, “that history has
known, when the very staff of life is, one may say, the apple of
discord, it is an honor to me to take the chair!”
“The cart you mean!” cried a voice, “you’re in the cart!”
The speaker cast a withering glance in the direction whence the voice
came, lost his place and, failing to find it, went on in a different
strain. “I’m a business man,” he said, “you all know that! I’m a
business man, and I’m not ashamed of it. I stick to my business and my
business to-day——”
“Better go on with it!”
But he was getting set, and he was not to be abashed. “My business
to-day,” he repeated, “is to ask your attention for the distinguished
candidate who seeks your suffrages, and for the—the distinguished
gentleman on my left who will presently follow me.”
A hollow groan checked him at this point, but he recovered himself.
“First, however,” he continued, “I propose, with your permission, to
say a word on the—the great question of the day—if I may call it so. It
is to the food of the people I refer!”
He paused for cheers, under cover of which Banfield murmured to his
neighbor that Hatton was set now for half an hour. He had yet to learn
that open-air meetings have their advantages.
“The food of the people!” Hatton repeated, uplifted by the applause.
“It is to me a sacred thing! My friends, it is to me the Ark of the
Covenant. The bread is the life. It should go straight, untaxed,
untouched from the field of the farmer to the house of—of the widow and
the orphan!”
“Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear!” Then, “What about the miller?”
“It should go from where it is grown,” Hatton repeated, “to where it is
needed; from where it is grown to the homes of the poor! And to the
man,” slipping easily and fatally into his Sunday vein, “that lays his
’and upon it, let him be whom he may, I say with the Book, ‘Thou shalt
not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn!’ The Law, ay, and the
Prophets——”
“Ay, Hatton’s profits! Hands off them!” roared the bass voice.
“Low bread and high profits!” shrieked the treble. “Hatton and thirty
per cent!”
A gust of laughter swept all away for a time, and when the speaker
could again get a hearing he had lost his thread and his temper.
“That’s a low insinuation!” he cried, crimson in the face. “A low
insinuation! I scorn to answer it!”
“Regular old Puseyite you be,” shouted a new tormentor. “Quoting
Scripture.”
Hatton shook his fist at the crowd. “A low, dirty insinuation!” he
cried. “I scorn——”
“You don’t scorn the profits!”
“Listen! Silence!” Then, “I shall not say another word! You’re not
worth it! You’re below it! I call on Mr. Brierly of Manchester to
propose a resolution.”
And casting vengeful glances here and there where he fancied he
detected an opponent, he stood back. He began for the first time to
think the meeting a mistake. Basset, who had held that opinion from the
first, scanned the crowd and had his misgivings.
The man from Manchester, however, had none. He stood forward, a smile
on his broad face, his chest thrown forward, a something easy in his
air, as became one who had confronted thousands and was not to be put
out of countenance by a few hisses. He waited good-humoredly for
silence. Nor could he see that, behind the cart, there had been
gathering for some time a band of men of a different air from those who
faced the platform. These men were still coming up by twos and threes,
issuing from side-streets; men clad in homespun and with ruddy faces,
men in smocked frocks, men in velveteens; a few with belcher
neckerchiefs and slouched felts, whom their mothers would not have
known. When Brierly raised his hand and opened his mouth there were
over two score of these men—and they were still coming up.
But Brierly was unaware of them, and, complacent and confident of the
effect he would produce, he opened his mouth.
“Gentlemen,” he began. His voice, strong and musical, reached the edge
of the meeting. “Gentlemen, free electors! And I tell you straight no
man is free, no man had ought to be free——”
Boom! and again, Boom! Boom! Not four paces behind him a drum rolled
heavily, drowning his voice. He stopped, his mouth open; for an instant
surprise held the crowd also. Then laughter swept the meeting and
supplied a treble to the drum’s persistent bass.
And still the drum went on, Boom! Boom! amid cheers, yells, laughter.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. More slowly, the
hurrahs, yells, laughter, died down, the laughter the last to fail, for
not only had the big man’s face of surprise tickled the crowd, but the
drum had so nicely taken the pitch of his voice that the interruption
seemed even to his friends a joke.
He seized the opportunity, but defiance not complacency was now his
note. “Gentlemen,” he said, “it’s funny, but you don’t drum me down,
let me tell you! You don’t drum me down! What I said I’m going to say
again, and shame the devil and the landlords! Free men——”
But he did not say it. Boom, boom, rolled the drum, drowning his voice
beyond hope. And this time, with the fourth stroke, a couple of fifes
struck into a sprightly measure, and the next moment three score lively
voices were roaring:
You’ve here the little Peeler,
Out of place he will not go!
But to keep it, don’t he turn about
And jump Jim Crow!
But to keep it see him turn about
And jump Jim Crow!
Turn about, and wheel about
And do just so!
_Chorus_
The only dance Sir Robert knows
Is Jump Jim Crow!
The only dance Sir Robert knows
Is Jump Jim Crow!
For a verse or two the singers had it their own way. Then the band of
the meeting struck in with “See, the Conquering Hero Comes!” and as the
airs clashed in discord, the stalwarts of the two parties clashed also
in furious struggle. In a twinkling and as by magic the scene changed.
Women, children, lads, fled every way, screaming and falling. Shrieks
of alarm routed laughter. The crowd swayed stormily, flowed this way,
ebbed that way. The clatter of staves on clubs rang above oaths and
shouts of defiance, as the Yellows made a rush for the drum. Men were
down, men were trampled on, men strove to scale the cart, others strove
to descend from it. But to descend from it was to descend into a mêlée
of random fists and falling sticks, and the man from Manchester
bellowed to stand fast; while Hatton shouted to “clear out these
rogues,” and Banfield called on his men to charge. Basset alone stood
silent, measuring the conflict with his eyes. With an odd exultation he
felt his spirits rise to meet the need.
He saw quickly that the orange favors were outnumbered, and were giving
way; and almost as quickly that, so far as mischief was meant, it was
aimed at the Manchester man. He was a stranger, he was the delegate of
the League, he was a marked man. Already there were cries to duck him.
Basset tapped Banfield on the shoulder.
“They’ll not touch us,” he shouted in the man’s ear, “but we must get
Brierly away. There’s Pritchard’s house opposite. We must fight our way
to it. Pass the word!” Then to Brierly, “Mr. Brierly, we must get you
away. There’s a gang here means mischief.”
“Let them come on!” cried the Manchester man, “I’m not afraid.”
“No, but I am,” Basset replied. “We’re responsible, and we’ll not have
you hurt here. Down all!” he cried raising his voice, as he saw the
band whom he had already marked, pressing up to the cart through the
mêlée—they moved with the precision of a disciplined force, and most of
their faces were muffled. “Down all!” he shouted. “Yellows to the
rescue! Down before they upset us!”
The leaders scrambled out of the cart, some panic-stricken, some
enjoying the scuffle. They were only just in time. The Yellows were in
flight, amid yells and laughter, and before the last of the platform
was over the side, the cart was tipped up by a dozen sturdy arms.
Hatton and another were thrown down, but a knot of their men, the last
with fight in them, rallied to the call, plucked the two to their feet,
and, striking out manfully, covered the rear of the retreating force.
The men with the belcher neckerchiefs pressed on silently, brandishing
their clubs, and twice with cries of “Down him! Down him!” made a rush
for Brierly, striking at him over the shoulders of his companions. But
it was plain that the assailants shrank from coming to blows with the
local magnates; and Basset seeing this handed Brierly over to an older
man, and himself fell back to cover the retreat.
“Fair play, men,” he cried, good humoredly. And he laughed in their
faces as he fell back before them. “Fair play! You’re too many for us
to-day, but wait till the polling-day!”
They hooted him. “Yah! Yah!” they cried. “You’d ruin the land that bred
you! You didn’t ought to be there!” “Give us that fustian rascal! We’ll
club him!”
“Who makes cloth o’ devil’s dust?” yelled another. “Yah! You d—d
cotton-spawn!”
Basset laughed in their faces, but he was not sorry when the friendly
doorway received his party. The country gang, satisfied with their
victory, began to fall back after breaking a dozen panes of glass; and
the panting and discomfited Yellows, thronging the passage and pulling
their coats into shape, were free to exchange condolences or
recriminations as they pleased. More than one had been against the
open-air meeting, and Hatton, a sorry figure, hatless, and with a
sprained knee, was not likely to hear the end of it. Two or three had
black eyes, one had lost two teeth, another his hat, and Brierly his
note-book.
But almost before a word had been exchanged, a man pushed his way among
them. He had slipped into the house by the back way. “For God’s sake,
gentlemen,” he cried, “get the constable, or there’ll be murder!”
“What is it?” asked a dozen voices.
“They’ve got Ben Bosham, half a hundred of them! They’re away to the
canal with him. They’re that mad with him they’ll drown him!”
So far Basset had treated the affair as a joke. But Bosham’s plight in
the hands of a mob of angry farmers seemed more than a joke. Murder
might really be done. He snatched a thick stick from a corner—he had
been hitherto unarmed—and raised his voice. “Mr. Banfield,” he said,
“go to Stubbs and tell him what is doing! He can control them if any
one can. And do some of you, gentlemen, come with me! We must get him
from them.”
“But we’re not enough,” a man protested.
“The man must not be murdered,” Basset replied. “Come, gentlemen,
they’ll not dare to touch us who know them, and we’ve the law with us!
Come on!”
“Well done, Squire!” cried Brierly. “You’re a man!”
“Ay, but I’m not man enough to take you!” Basset retorted. “You stay
here, please!”