Part 166 (1/2)
The chiefs of the Blue party went in state from Lansmere Park; the two candidates in open carriages, each attended with his proposer and seconder. Other carriages were devoted to Harley and Levy, and the princ.i.p.al members of the Committee. Riccabocca was seized with a fit of melancholy or cynicism, and declined to join the procession. But just before they started, as all were a.s.sembling without the front door, the postman arrived with his welcome bag. There were letters for Harley, some for Levy, many for Egerton, one for Randal Leslie.
Levy, soon hurrying over his own correspondence, looked, in the familiar freedom wherewith he usually treated his particular friends, over Randal's shoulder.
”From the squire?” said he. ”Ah, he has written at last! What made him delay so long? Hope he relieves your mind?”
”Yes,” cried Randal, giving way to a joy that rarely lighted up his close and secret countenance,--”yes, he does not write from Hazeldean,--not there when my letter arrived, in London, could not rest at the Hall,--the place reminded him too much of Frank;--went again to town, on the receipt of my first letter concerning the rupture of the marriage, to see after his son, and take up some money to pay off his post-obit. Read what he says:--
”'So, while I was about a mortgage--never did I guess that I should be the man to enc.u.mber the Hazeldean estate--I thought I might as well add L20,000 as L10,000 to the total. Why should you be indebted at all to that Baron Levy? Don't have dealings with money- lenders. Your grandmother was a Hazeldean; and from a Hazeldean you shall have the whole sum required in advance for those Rood lands,-- good light soil some of them. As to repayment, we'll talk of that later. If Frank and I come together again, as we did of old, why, my estates will be his some day, and he'll not grudge the mortgage, so fond as he always was of you; and if we don't come together, what do I care for hundreds or thousands, either more or less? So I shall be down at Lansmere the day after to-morrow, just in the thick of your polling. Beat the manufacturer, my boy, and stick up for the land. Tell Levy to have all ready. I shall bring the money down in good bank-notes, and a brace of pistols in my coat pocket to take care of them in ease robbers get scent of the notes and attack me on the road, as they did my grandfather sixty years ago, come next Michaelmas. A Lansmere election puts one in mind of pistols.
I once fought a duel with an officer in his Majesty's service, R.N., and had a ball lodged in my right shoulder, on account of an election at Lansmere; but I have forgiven Audley his share in that transaction. Remember me to him kindly. Don't get into a duel yourself; but I suppose manufacturers don't fight,--not that I blame them for that--far from it.'”
The letter then ran on to express surprise, and hazard conjecture, as to the wealthy marriage which Randal had announced as a pleasing surprise to the squire.
”Well,” said Levy, returning the letter, ”you must have written as cleverly as you talk, or the squire is a b.o.o.by indeed.”
Randal smiled, pocketed his letter, and responding to the impatient call of his proposer, sprang lightly into the carriage.
Harley, too, seemed pleased with the letters delivered to himself, and now joined Levy, as the candidates drove slowly off.
”Has not Mr. Leslie received from the squire an answer to that letter of which you informed me?”
”Yes, my Lord, the squire will be here to-morrow.”
”To-morrow? Thank you for apprising me; his rooms shall be prepared.”
”I suppose he will only stay to see Leslie and myself, and pay the money.”
”Aha! Pay the money. Is it so, then?”
”Twice the sum, and, it seems, as a gift, which Leslie only asked as a loan. Really, my Lord, Mr. Leslie is a very clever man; and though I am at your commands, I should not like to injure him. With such matrimonial prospects, he could be a very powerful enemy; and if he succeed in parliament, still more so.”
”Baron, these gentlemen are waiting for you. I will follow by myself.”
CHAPTER XXV.
In the centre of the raised platform in the town-hall sat the mayor.
On either hand of that dignitary now appeared the candidates of the respective parties,--to his right, Audley Egerton and Leslie; to his left, d.i.c.k Avenel and Leonard.
The place was as full as it could hold. Rows of grimy faces peeped in, even from the upper windows outside the building. The contest was one that created intense interest, not only from public principles, but local pa.s.sions. d.i.c.k Avenel, the son of a small tradesman, standing against the Right Honourable Audley Egerton, the choice of the powerful Lansmere aristocratic party,--standing, too, with his nephew by his side; taking, as he himself was wont to say, ”the tarnation Blue Bull by both its oligarchical horns!”--there was a pluck and gallantry in the very impudence of the attempt to convert the important borough--for one member of which a great earl had hitherto striven, ”with labour dire and weary woe” into two family seats for the House of Avenel and the triumph of the Capelocracy.
This alone would have excited all the spare pa.s.sions of a country borough; but, besides this, there was the curiosity that attached to the long-deferred public appearance of a candidate so renowned as the ex-minister,--a man whose career had commenced with his success at Lansmere, and who now, amidst the popular tempest that scattered his colleagues, sought to refit his vessel in the same harbour from which it had first put forth. New generations had grown up since the name of Audley Egerton had first fluttered the dovecotes in that Corioli. The questions that had then seemed so important were, for the most part, settled and at rest. But those present who remembered Egerton in the former day, were struck to see how the same characteristics of bearing and aspect which had distinguished his early youth revived their interest in the mature and celebrated man. As he stood up for a few moments, before he took his seat beside the mayor, glancing over the a.s.sembly, with its uproar of cheers and hisses, there was the same stately erectness of form and steadfastness of look, the same indefinable and mysterious dignity of externals, that imposed respect, confirmed esteem, or stilled dislike. The hisses involuntarily ceased.
The preliminary proceedings over, the proposers and seconders commenced their office.
Audley was proposed, of course, by the crack man of the party,--a gentleman who lived on his means in a white house in the High Street, had received a University education, and was a cadet of a ”County Family.” This gentleman spoke much about the Const.i.tution, something about Greece and Rome; compared Egerton with William Pitt, also with Aristides; and sat down, after an oration esteemed cla.s.sical by the few, and p.r.o.nounced prosy by the many. Audley's seconder, a burly and important maltster, struck a bolder key. He dwelt largely upon the necessity of being represented by gentlemen of wealth and rank, and not by ”upstarts and adventurers.” (Cheers and groans.) ”Looking at the candidates on the other side, it was an insult to the respectability of Lansmere to suppose its const.i.tuents could elect a man who had no pretensions whatever to their notice, except that he had once been a little boy in the town, in which his father kept a shop,--and a very noisy, turbulent, dirty little boy he was!” d.i.c.k smoothed his spotless s.h.i.+rt-front, and looked daggers, while the Blues laughed heartily, and the Yellows cried ”Shame!” ”As for the other candidate on the same side, he [the maltster] had nothing to say against him.--He was, no doubt, seduced into presumption by his uncle and his own inexperience. It was said that that candidate, Mr. Fairfield, was an author and a poet; if so, he was unknown to fame, for no bookseller in the town had ever even heard of Mr. Fairfield's works. Then it was replied Mr. Fairfield had written under another name. What would that prove? Either that he was ashamed of his name, or that the works did him no credit. For his part, he [the maltster] was an Englishman; he did not like anonymous scribblers; there was something not right in whatever was concealed. A man should never be afraid to put his name to what he wrote. But grant that Mr. Fairfield was a great author and a great poet, what the borough of Lansinere wanted was, not a member who would pa.s.s his time in writing sonnets to Peggy or Moggy, but a practical man of business,--a statesman,--such a man as Mr. Audley Egerton, a gentleman of ancient birth, high standing, and princely fortune. The member for such a place as Lansmere should have a proper degree of wealth.” (”Hear, hear!” from the Hundred and Fifty Hesitators, who all stood in a row at the bottom of the hall; and ”Gammon!” ”Stuff!” from some revolutionary but incorruptible Yellows.) Still the allusion to Egerton's private fortune had considerable effect with the bulk of the audience, and the maltster was much cheered on concluding. Mr. Avenel's proposer and seconder--the one a large grocer, the other the proprietor of a new shop for ticketed prints, shawls, blankets, and counterpanes,--a man, who, as he boasted, dealt with the People for ready money, and no mistake, at least none that he ever rectified--next followed. Both said much the same thing. Mr. Avenel had made his fortune by honest industry, was a fellow-townsman, must know the interests of the town better than strangers, upright public principles, never fawn on governments, would see that the people had their rights, and cut down army, navy, and all other jobs of a corrupt aristocracy, etc. Randal Leslie's proposer, a captain on half-pay, undertook a long defence of army and navy, from the unpatriotic aspersions of the preceding speakers, which defence diverted him from the due praise of Randal, until cries of ”Cut it short,”
recalled him to that subject; and then the topics he selected for eulogium were ”amiability of character, so conspicuous in the urbane manners of his young friend;” ”coincidence in the opinions of that ill.u.s.trious statesman with whom he was conjoined;” ”early tuition in the best principles; only fault, youth,--and that was a fault which would diminish every day.” Randal's seconder was a bluff yeoman, an outvoter of weight with the agricultural electors. He was too straightforward by half,--adverted to Audley Egerton's early desertion of questions espoused by landed interest, hoped he had had enough of the large towns; and he (the yeoman) was ready to forgive and forget, but trusted that there would be no chance of burning their member again in effigy. As to the young gentleman, whose nomination he had the pleasure to second, did not know much about him; but the Leslies were an old family in the neighbouring county, and Mr. Leslie said he was nearly related to Squire Hazeldean,--as good a man as ever stood upon shoe leather. He (the yeoman) liked a good breed in sheep and bullocks; and a good breed in men he supposed was the same thing. He (the yeoman) was not for abuses,--he was for King and Const.i.tution. He should have no objection, for instance, to have t.i.thes lowered, and the malt-tax repealed,--not the least objection. Mr. Leslie seemed to him a likely young chap, and uncommon well-spoken; and, on the whole, for aught he (the yeoman) could see, would do quite as well in parliament as nine-tenths of the gentlemen sent there. The yeoman sat down, little cheered by the Blues, much by the Yellows, and with a dim consciousness that somehow or other he had rather damaged than not the cause of the party he had been chosen to advocate. Leonard was not particularly fortunate in his proposer, a youngish gentleman, who, having tried various callings, with signal unsuccess, had come into a small independence, and set up for a literary character. This gentleman undertook the defence of poets, as the half-pay captain had undertaken that of the army and navy; and after a dozen sentences spoken through the nose, about the ”moonlight of existence,” and ”the oasis in the desert,” suddenly broke down, to the satisfaction of his impatient listeners. This failure was, however, redeemed by Leonard's seconder, a master tailor, a practised speaker and an earnest, thinking man, sincerely liking and warmly admiring Leonard Fairfield. His opinions were delivered with brief simplicity, and accompanied by expressions of trust in Leonard's talents and honesty, that were effective, because expressed with feeling.
These preparatory orations over, a dead silence succeeded, and Audley Egerton arose.
At the first few sentences, all felt they were in the presence of one accustomed to command attention, and to give to opinions the weight of recognized authority. The slowness of the measured accents, the composure of the manly aspect, the decorum of the simple gestures,--all bespoke and all became the minister of a great empire, who had less agitated a.s.semblies by impa.s.sioned eloquence, than compelled their silent respect to the views of sagacity and experience. But what might have been formal and didactic in another was relieved in Egerton by that air, tone, bearing of gentleman, which have a charm for the most plebeian audience. He had eminently these attributes in private life; but they became far more conspicuous whenever he had to appear in public. The ”senatorius decor” seemed a phrase coined for him.
Audley commenced with notice of his adversaries in that language of high courtesy which is so becoming to superior station, and which augurs better for victory than the most pointed diatribes of hostile declamation. Inclining his head towards Avenel, he expressed regret that he should be opposed by a gentleman whose birth naturally endeared him to the town, of which he was a distinguished native, and whose honourable ambition was in itself a proof of the admirable nature of that Const.i.tution, which admitted the lowliest to rise to its distinctions, while it compelled the loftiest to labour and compete for those honours which were the most coveted, because they were derived from the trust of their countrymen, and dignified by the duties which the sense of responsibility entailed. He paid a pa.s.sing but generous compliment to the reputed abilities of Leonard Fairfield; and alluding with appropriate grace to the interest he had ever taken in the success of youth striving for place in the van of the new generation that marched on to replace the old, he implied that he did not consider Leonard as opposed to himself, but rather as an emulous compet.i.tor for a worthy prize with his ”own young and valued friend, Mr. Randal Leslie.”
”They are happy at their years!” said the statesman, with a certain pathos. ”In the future they see nothing to fear, in the past they have nothing to defend. It is not so with me.” And then, pa.s.sing on to the vague insinuations or bolder charges against himself and his policy proffered by the preceding speakers, Audley gathered himself up, and paused; for his eye here rested on the Reporters seated round the table just below him; and he recognized faces not unfamiliar to his recollection when metropolitan a.s.semblies had hung on the words which fell from lips then privileged to advise a king. And involuntarily it occurred to the ex-minister to escape altogether from this contracted audience,--this election, with all its a.s.sociations of pain,--and address himself wholly to that vast and invisible Public, to which those Reporters would transmit his ideas. At this thought his whole manner gradually changed. His eye became fixed on the farthest verge of the crowd; his tones grew more solemn in their deep and sonorous swell. He began to review and to vindicate his whole political life. He spoke of the measures he had aided to pa.s.s, of his part in the laws which now ruled the land. He touched lightly, but with pride, on the services he had rendered to the opinions he had represented. He alluded to his neglect of his own private fortunes; but in what detail, however minute, in the public business committed to his charge, could even an enemy accuse him of neglect? The allusion was no doubt intended to prepare the public for the news that the wealth of Audley Egerton was gone. Finally, he came to the questions that then agitated the day; and made a general but masterly exposition of the policy which, under the changes he foresaw, he should recommend his party to adopt.