At the Hustings.
Mr. Drewitt and his nephew did not part quite as friends, and yet to the
eye of the world they did not part as enemies. Finding his wife’s
intervention useless, the owner of Kincorth, though grievously wounded
and worsted, let matters take their course. Had the quarrel originated
in anything else than the election, Mr. Drewitt would have felt its
consequences more bitterly than was the case. He could not have let his
dead brother’s only son leave Kincorth in such a fashion had a question
of politics not been raised between them; but as it was so it was.
Maxwell had done what his father would not have done—helped a man’s wife
to tamper with his tenantry; and if he liked to go, and if nothing could
hinder his going, why, he must do so, and take the consequences.
“He will be glad enough to come back when the election is over,” thought
Mr. Drewitt; but in this idea he was wrong. Maxwell had made up his mind
by very slow degrees to moving; but once made up it would have been
impossible to induce him to return.
He and his uncle had often had quarrels before, and Maxwell had
frequently hinted that if pushed too far he might leave Kincorth
altogether.
On one of these occasions Mr. Drewitt had told him he might go to the
devil if he chose, and Maxwell had retorted that his uncle had taken
precious good care he should not travel post at any rate.
Between such near relations little amenities of this kind meant nothing,
or next to nothing; but now the case was different. With no great
provocation, the young man had elected to leave Kincorth, and could not
be persuaded to remain in it.
If he repented of his choice at any future period, Kincorth was free to
him still. Meantime, as he sowed he must reap, and Kincorth could do
without him.
Supposing Archibald Drewitt ever reasoned out the question, it is very
likely he did it in somewhat the preceding fashion; but truth was, he
had little time for thinking. He was so taken up with the election—he
had such hosts of people to see—he was so eternally occupied, that he
had no leisure to observe things which did not, however, escape his
wife’s observation.
She saw her husband was not quite so popular as formerly. She perceived
that the lower orders were looking coldly on her; she heard indirectly
that the Liberals were making way; she understood that Maxwell’s
departure was being made a party question; she learnt that many laid the
blame of the fracas on her; when she passed through the tents that were
erected on the lawn, where the populace got drunk _au discrétion_ at her
husband’s expense, she heard muttered remarks on the subject of English
pride, and outlandish airs, and “interlopers.”
The election had seemed good fun at first; if it had done nothing else,
it had served to divert her attention from household grievances, from
domestic shortcomings; but now, when she laid her aching head on her
pillow, she sighed for the peace and the happiness of her father’s
house, and prayed for the contest to be well over.
Then, as in the future, Mrs. Drewitt had to fight out her fight alone.
From the first hour in which she set foot in her husband’s house she
kept her trials to herself; she made up her mind not to worry him about
trifles, and before long she came to the conclusion it would be quite as
well not to worry him about great things either.
Unstable as water! Who would entrust a pearl of great price to the
mercies of the stream, to the keeping of a river?—and yet this was
precisely what this poor soul had done all unwittingly. Her love was her
pearl; her happiness was her sole treasure; and she had cast both at the
feet of a man who, never having done well for himself, was never likely
to do well for her.
Unstable as water! the streamlet ran by; unstable as water! the waves
came and went, and ebbed and flowed, and she keeping up a brave face
through the day, cried herself to sleep at night.
She never saw her husband except in the middle of a crowd of voters or
else at the end of a long dinner-table. The house was crammed with
visitors. Sorely against her will she had even to move Kathleen to
Maxwell’s old room, and give the girl’s bedchamber to a bachelor guest.
“It is always like this in the hunting season, aunty; don’t mind about
me,” said Kathleen. “I have had to sleep many and many a night on the
floor, because they sat up so late it was no use trying to get a sofa;
on the floor with nothing but a blanket under me, and hard work to get
that. Maxwell did not like being turned out constantly, so he came up
here at last. When will he be back, aunty darling?”
“After the election, I hope, Kathie,” answered Mrs. Drewitt, as she
kissed the girl and bade her good-night. “After the election.”
“I wish it was over,” sighed Kathleen.
She did not wish it over more than her aunt, who firmly believed that
the contest never would have an end, for the minutes seemed to be like
days, and the days like years.
But at last the nomination day came round, and both parties girt up
their loins and prepared for war.
It was a fine morning, “God bliss it,” as the country people remarked
one to another: no better weather could have been desired for the
nomination of candidates. That was going to be a great day for
Connemara, at least for that portion of it in which we are at present
more particularly interested. The right of the Earl of Popingham to
return his nominee was going to be fiercely disputed; there was going to
be, at last, a thoroughly well-contested election. Hurrah! hurrah!
hurrah! and caps and hats went flying up in the air, and “Three cheers
for Sache,” and “None o’ that, but three times three with a will, boys,
for Pryor,” re-echoed through the usually quiet streets of Duranmore.
Hurrah! and huzza! and hooroo! Who would not yell and cheer and shout
till he was black in the face?—for had every public-house not been open
to the populace for weeks past? and was not every “free and independent”
drunk? and had not each man amongst them who was wavering in the least
pocketed his five, or ten, or twenty pounds? and was not Irish
enthusiasm and Irish excitement worked up by whiskey and party feeling
to fever-point on that glorious August morning when Geoffry Pryor was to
be seconded by Maxwell Drewitt?
The town was fuller than a fair; the electors were drunker than
fiddlers; the canvassers were busier than ever; the candidates were in
an agony of suspense; the windows opposite the hustings were crowded
with ladies; the inn-yards were a sight to behold, crammed full of
carriages. There were opposition bands playing, and flags waving, and
ribbons fluttering, and people jostling, and boys shouting, and women
screaming, and children being crushed to pieces, and police plunging
through the crowd. Two companies of horse occupied one side of the
market-place, ready to charge the populace at a moment’s notice; and,
altogether, Duranmore was a great and cheering sight, for in the days of
which I am now writing elections were no child’s play. Lives were lost,
men trampled under foot, ridden down by the soldiers, kicked, stoned,
cudgelled. Heads were cracked, limbs broken. Donnybrook, at its worst,
was a peaceable sort of scene in comparison to an Irish election at its
best, where men of station and of standing sacrificed fortune,
character, position, truth, honour, honesty, their fellow-creatures’
happiness, and, in many cases, their fellow-creatures’ lives, to return
for their representative in Parliament perhaps as great a vagabond as
ever cheated the sheriff.
Duranmore and West Connemara was, for various reasons, considered by the
landlord interest in that part of Ireland a stronghold of considerable
importance; and the interest of the approaching contest consisted in the
fact that it was to be a kind of fight for independence. Was the seat
virtually to belong to the Earl of Popingham, or not? Were the Roman
Catholics going to let the sworn enemy of their church return his
nominee again?
The priests had been busy; the priests had their crow to pluck with the
Earl, and were going to make the election expensive to him at any rate.
Whilst the landlords threatened ejection from their holdings, the
priests threatened exclusion from heaven. While the Earl of Popingham
said, “Vote for Sache—or notice at November,” the proprietors of snug
little locations in the next world whispered, “Vote for Pryor—or
everlasting damnation.”
It was a nice fix for men to be placed in. Starvation in this world, or
hell fire in the next—a lively prospect either way; so cheerful that we
can scarcely wonder that in many cases the tenants preferred facing the
danger which was furthest off, and chose rather to fall into the hands
of the devil than into those of their landlord.
It is of many and many a year ago I am talking, I pray you bear in mind.
If the landed proprietors of those days were not unexceptionable, their
successors have doubtless made all up to the generation of tenants that
pay rents now; and as it is not very graceful to cut down into old
sores, I will only add, there was not a place in the United Kingdom
where party feeling ran so high, where bribes were so heavy, where such
an amount of virulence and animosity was displayed, as it was in that
out-of-the-way corner of the earth where two fit and proper candidates
were about to contest the honour of representing the people in
Parliament.
As a matter of course, there had always hitherto been some fight made,
and equally perhaps of course the nominee had always heretofore won; but
on this occasion the claims seemed more nearly equal than had ever been
the case before, for it was well known that young Mr. Waller of Eversbeg
had deserted his late father’s principles and gone over to the enemy;
and it was reported that—instigated thereto and encouraged therein by
Lady Emmeline Vervensoe and Mr. Maxwell Drewitt—the Vervensoe tenantry
had turned restive on a papistical question, and were intending to vote
according to the dictates of their unenlightened consciences for once.
Altogether, Duranmore was a great and glorious sight.
It was enough to make any one madly in love with our representative
system, and with the way seats in Parliament are secured, to see the
spectacle the town presented.
For a month the place had been drunk—not figuratively, but literally—for
weeks men had not been men, but rather casks full of spirits: they drank
till they were blind, and then slept till they could see. The whole town
and all the inhabitants thereof smelt of whiskey; every free and
independent was in a state of greater or lesser incapability; every
barmaid was frightfully active; every servant went about like a walking
ribbon-shop; every wife was on the look-out for money: if the husbands
were drunk, that was no reason why business should be neglected.
They would see to the votes when the time came; meanwhile they would
take care of the notes.
Towards the last there was no attempt to do the thing under the rose;
gentlemen and ladies went about buying votes—not begging them—not even
going through the ceremony of appearing to believe open bribery could
be, as the Countess of Popingham said, “hurtful to their sensitive
feelings.”
Rents were forgiven; fines remitted; leases promised; farms let on
advantageous terms; money was cheerfully paid for getting voters out of
the way; personation fees ran high—in short, neither side left a stone
unturned, or a trick untried, likely to prove beneficial to what they
were severally pleased to call the “good cause.”
To be strictly impartial, there was not a toss up between them.
“If you had shaken the Tories and Whigs up in a bag together,” remarked
Ryan afterwards, “I do not know which would have come out first.”
There were no clean hands among either party; no man was so free of
blame that he could have thrown stones at his opponent. The game had
been a tremendously expensive one; and “whoever wins, the people get the
stakes,” said Mr. Timothy Ryan regretfully.
What a gay sight the town presented! The windows of every house
commanding a view of the hustings were full of women—young, well-born,
beautiful—who exhibited red or blue ribbons, according to the side they
affected.
The fair Sacheites, headed by the Countess of Popingham, Mrs. Munks,
Lady Marsden, Mrs. Hickman, Mrs. Drewitt, and a bevy of other county
notables took possession of the assembly room, which chanced to be Lord
Marsden’s property; whilst conspicuous among the ladies in the Liberal
interest, who occupied the Court-house, appeared in white dress and red
ribbons the still beautiful though somewhat _passée_ Lady Emmeline
Vervensoe, who having openly deserted her husband’s colours, had gone
about canvassing, in company with Mr. Waller and Maxwell Drewitt, to the
intense mortification of her husband and the extreme scandal and disgust
of the Popingham faction.
Lady Emmeline had come of great people; she was an heiress in her own
right, she had condescended to marry a commoner; further, she was a
poetess and had written some very charming lines to the cuckoo, and a
few verses of a highly laudatory character concerning Duranmore Bay—for
all these reasons Lady Emmeline did as she pleased, and suffering no one
to say her nay, sat on the opposition benches, smiling in conscious
loveliness, the observed of all observers.
The town was like a garden; every flower-bed for miles round having been
rifled of its treasures to deck the houses, horses, and hustings.
Triumphal arches of red and white dahlias, long festoons of evergreens
relieved by flowers formed of blue calico and tied with floating
ribbons, branches of oak, sycamore, and elm, yards of ivy, hearts,
stars, mottoes formed of every imaginable flower hung fading in the sun.
Blue flags and red flags danced in the light breeze; the opposition
bands played at one and the same time Garry Owen and God save the King;
full-length caricatures of Sache and Pryor were exhibited on every
available yard of wall; election ballads were chanted at the extremest
pitch of the human voice; there were drums, there were horns, there were
Jew’s harps, there were penny whistles, there was every imaginable
instrument, there was every imaginable noise.
Sache’s supporters drove into town, their servants dressed in blue and
silver liveries, and their carriages decorated with blue hammer-cloths,
edged with silver lace. Pryor’s friends—for the most part young
bachelors who affected different opinions from those their fathers had
held—came galloping into the market square with their saddles and
bridles ornamented in red and gold.
Such splendour! such misery! such evidences of wealth! such signs of
poverty! such sleek, well-groomed, gaily-caparisoned horses! such
under-fed, dirty, half-clothed men and women!
Ah! reader, how can I ever hope to show you the violent contrasts that
were presented to view within so small a space—contrasts that would have
been shocking, had they not been ludicrous also?
The candidates were so spruce, the constituents were so shabby; the hats
of the first were faultless, the head-gear of the latter wretched: the
blue or red colours of the gentry showed to advantage over glossy
broadcloth, over snowy waistcoats; the rosettes of the electors were
pinned on tattered garments, that had been patched and patched till they
were like unto the coat of many colours that brought Joseph so much
ill-will.
But though poor, they were merry; they were, as the Earl of Popingham
said, perpetrating an execrable pun, “full of spirits;” and fuller of
whiskey than they had ever been of food, laughing, jeering, jesting,
yelling, shouting, they shoved and pushed and fought their way up
towards the hustings.
Mr. Sache was not popular among the lower orders, and he knew it. He was
no hero—morally and physically he was a coward; and though he had drunk
brandy enough to have, as Lord Marsden contemptuously told him, brought
colour into the cheeks of a corpse, yet when he appeared on the hustings
he looked the very embodiment of terror and despair.
Gazing down upon the sea of upturned faces, listening to the jeers and
menaces of the crowd, in mortal dread of dead cats, rotten cabbages, and
still more rotten eggs, he thought a seat in Parliament hardly worth
passing through such an ordeal to gain.
“What the deuce brought me here?” he said to Mr. Munks, and his lips
were white and his body all of a tremble while he spoke.
“What the deuce brought you here, is it?” asked Mr. Munks; “why, we did,
and damned idiots we have been, I consider, for our pains. But now you
are here, there is no help for the matter; and if you show the white
feather, by —— I’ll shoot you dead!”
And then Mr. Munks faced round on young Waller of Eversbeg, who was
mocking Mr. Sache, and laughing at the creditable figure cut by the
Conservative candidate; turned round, and asked him how _he_ would like
to have his account settled, “in cold steel or hot lead?”
Whereupon Mr. Waller demanded if Mr. Munks wanted to make his will.
“Because,” he went on, “Ryan can draw you out a draft, and Mr. Pryor
would give an opinion on it, and I dare say make no charge under the
circumstances.”
“Get to business—get to business, Munks,” whispered Mr. Drewitt,
impatiently, “for heaven’s sake let us have it over;” and thus exhorted,
Mr. Munks, whenever the cheering and groaning consequent upon the
appearance of the candidates had in some measure subsided, commenced,
“Gentlemen——”
“Three groans, my boys, and don’t listen to him. Hiss——” and there came
a storm of yells and hisses and execrations, accompanied by a smart
shower of missiles, most of which fortunately fell short of the target.
“Gentlemen,” again essayed Mr. Munks, who, whatever other virtues he
lacked, certainly was game to the backbone. “Gentlemen——”
“Who raised the rints last half——?”
“Who broke the leases?”
“Who put Dick Benton to the dure?”
“Who took the roof off the Widdy Martin, and her down in the favar?”
“Och! ye murthering villain.”
“Och! ye blackguard thafe.”
“Put a praty in yer ugly mouth; here’s one for ye.”
“Gentlemen——”
“Hould yer tongue.”
“He couldn’t do it. He’d slobber his chin.”
“Gentlemen, I beg to——”
“Beg of somebody, then, that doesn’t know ye.”
“Och, can’t ye let the man spake? Shure his wife never lets him have the
chance at home.”
“Go away and send up Betty!”
“In her ridin’-habit!”
“That she is goin’ to be buried in!”
“Come, come, my lads, this won’t do!” yelled out Ryan, in a stentorian
voice, which was distinctly audible even above the din. “Fair play is a
jewel. Never refuse to listen to anybody. Hear Mr. Munks—you don’t know
what he may be going to promise you.”
“Talk’s chape!” shouted out a refractory voter. “Fine words butther no
parsnips!”
“Ye can’t boult the dure wid a boiled carrot!”
“Be quiet, will you!” vociferated Ryan, “and attend to the gentleman’s
speech;” and thus exhorted the crowd permitted Mr. Munks to commence.
He said he hoped they would return Mr. Sache, that he was no stranger,
but a resident in the neighbourhood, and known to every one of them.
“A d——d sight too well!” hiccupped a tipsy tailor; at which remark the
hubbub began again with twenty times greater vigour than ever.
Hissing, yelling, hooting, cheering, cries of “Go on, Munks!” “Go in and
win!” “Speak up, man!” “Make haste or you’ll be late!” “Are you afraid
of Betty? Lord, man, we won’t let her touch you here!” with peals of
laughter and volleys of oaths, compelled Mr. Munks finally to give up in
despair.
“It is of no use,” he exclaimed; “they won’t listen to us; there is a
conspiracy; the crowd is packed.”
On this Maxwell Drewitt came hurriedly forward. “If you won’t hear Mr.
Munks,” he cried, “hear my uncle. We are on opposite sides, but I am
sure he will tell you a great deal you would not willingly miss. Now
three cheers for Archibald Drewitt, who never defrauded the poor man
yet! Cheer like Irishmen, and not like a set of over-fed, beer-drinking
Saxons. Cheer, you rascals, cheer!”
Thus exhorted, the rascals did cheer, till they were hoarse, for
Archibald Drewitt, for Maxwell Drewitt for Waller and for Pryor; but
somehow Mr. Sache’s seconder did not seem much elated by the applause.
Pushing his nephew aside, he said, the moment a lull in the tempest
permitted his words to be heard——
“I need no one to claim a hearing from me. I am not afraid of your
refusing any request of mine. You will give a patient hearing to your
old friend Archibald Drewitt—(tremendous cheering and cries of ‘That we
will!’) We are old acquaintances, and do not need to be introduced to
one another by anybody. We have not always agreed about politics, it is
true, but we have agreed to disagree. Some amongst you go with me, and
others do not; but to one and all my advice is—Return Mr. Sache! [Uproar
and yells of ‘No, we won’t!’] Yes, gentlemen, you will. He is as honest
a man as you’ll find. [Interruption, and a remark that ‘Honest men must
be scarce!’] Yes, my friends, I admit that they are scarce, and for that
very reason you ought not to let Mr. Sache slip through your fingers. He
will do you justice in Parliament! [Great confusion.] He knows your
wants, and you know his principles. [‘To be very bad!’] He is a
gentleman who will never deceive you.” [‘No, faith, we know him too well
to let him do that. He was cut out for a gentleman, but the devil ran
away with the patthern!’] And then came another burst of yelling,
hissing, and fighting.
“Now, now, my friends,” said Mr. Drewitt, “I asked you for a peaceable
hearing, and I thought you would have done that much for me. It is not
so often I make a speech that you should interrupt me when I do. Just
give me five minutes to tell you why you should return Mr. Sache, and I
will promise not to detain you longer. [A prolonged howl, and cries of
‘We want to hear nothing about him.’] Very likely; but I want to tell
you something about him. His political views are sound; if you do not
approve of them, it is not because they are bad, but because you cannot
see what is good for you. He is an Irishman, has an interest in the
soil, loves the country of his birth, will speak up for your rights——”
“Arrah! hear that. The man can’t say boo to a goose. Him spake up!” And
ironical cheers and perfect shrieks of laughter drowned the remainder of
Mr. Drewitt’s sentence.
“Well, gentlemen,” he resumed, when a partial lull enabled his words to
be heard, “I suppose if I appeared before you a candidate for the honour
of representing you in Parliament, instead of trying to second Mr.
Munks’s statement, that Mr. Sache is a fit and proper person to fill
that office—in that case also, I suppose, you would refuse to hear a
syllable I had to say?”
“No, we would not; we’d return you and send you up to London flying.
Propose yourself, Archibald Drewitt, and we’ll second you. Hurrah!”
He had them on the hip now, and pushed his advantage.
“Then it is to Mr. Sache himself and not to his political principles you
object. They cannot but be to your liking, because you say you would
have me for your member, and my views are identical with his. My
friends, you are acting at this minute much like children who strike a
hard table when they have knocked themselves. You think you will hurt us
by returning Mr. Pryor, and in reality you will only hurt yourselves.
Mr. Sache wishes to serve you; but as you do not happen to like him, you
cheer and shout for a man who will not serve you at all. Mr. Pryor, a
very estimable young gentleman no doubt, is not fitted to be your
representative. What interest has he in the country? Though an Irishman,
I believe, by descent, he is yet English by birth, education, and
residence. He is a stranger, a lawyer, a mere boy.”
“Fifty times betther man than Sache, the dirty spalpeen! We won’t hear a
word against Pryor. We’ll gag the first that cheers for the hardhearted
landlord.” Which speech being accepted as a challenge, gave rise to a
regular shindy, that diversified and enlivened the proceedings. Heads
were cracked, shillelaghs waved, lips cut, an arm or two broken: the
police had finally to interfere to restore order, and then Mr. Waller
came to the front, and was greeted with tumultuous acclamations from the
one side and by hisses, groans, cabbagestalks, bad eggs, and rotten
fruit from the Sacheites.
“Gentlemen.”
“Three cheers for Lady Emmeline! Three times three!”
And Lady Vervensoe, who had drawn public attention to herself by waving
a crimson scarf out of the window, now rose and bowed right and left to
the crowd in acknowledgment of their compliment.
With her white dress and red ribbons, with her chip hat and plume of red
feathers, her grace and beauty, she created quite a furore; and during
the excitement attendant on this demonstration Mr. Waller managed to
move the election of his cousin, Mr. Pryor, as a fit and proper person
to represent Duranmore and West Connemara in Parliament.
“It is my turn now,” whispered Maxwell Drewitt to Ryan. And he came
forward, and leaning over the rails, and jauntily holding in his left
hand a brand new hat, began—