That night the mother and daughter shared the same bed together, and Mrs. Ray was able to sleep. She would not confess to herself that her sorrow had been lightened, because nothing had been said or done to lessen that of her daughter; but on the morrow Rachel came and hovered round her again, and the bitterness of Mrs. Ray’s grief was removed.
XXIV
The Election at Baslehurst
Towards the end of September the day of the election arrived, and with it arrived Luke Rowan at Baslehurst. The vacancy had been occasioned by the acceptance of the then sitting member of that situation under the crown which is called the stewardship of the manor of Helpholme. In other words an old gentleman who had done his life’s work retired and made room for someone more young and active. The old member had kept his seat till the end of the session, just leaving time for the moving for a new writ, and now the election was about to be held, almost at the earliest day possible. It had been thought that a little reflection would induce the Baslehurst people to reject the smiles of the Jew tailor from London, and therefore as little time for reflection was given to them as possible. The wealth, the liberal politics, the generosity, and the successes of Mr. Hart were dinned into their ears by a succession of speeches, and by an overpowering flight of enormous posters; and then the Jewish hero, the tailor himself, came among them, and astonished their minds by the ease and volubility of his speeches. He did not pronounce his words with any of those soft slushy Judaic utterances by which they had been taught to believe he would disgrace himself. His nose was not hookey, with any especial hook, nor was it thicker at the bridge than was becoming. He was a dapper little man, with bright eyes, quick motion, ready tongue, and a very new hat. It seemed that he knew well how to canvass. He had a smile and a good word for all—enemies as well as friends. The task of abusing the Cornbury party he left to his committee and backers. He spent a great deal of money—throwing it away in every direction in which he could do so, without laying himself open to the watchful suspicion of the other side. He ate and drank like a Christian, and only laughed aloud when some true defender of the Protestant faith attempted to scare him away out of the streets by carrying a gammon of bacon up on high. Perhaps his strength as a popular candidate was best shown by his drinking a pint of Tappitt’s beer in the little parlour behind the bar at the Dragon.
“He beats me there,” said Butler Cornbury, when he heard of that feat.
But the action was a wise one. The question as to Tappitt’s brewery and Tappitt’s beer was running high at Baslehurst, and in no stronger way could Mr. Hart have bound to him the Tappitt faction than by swallowing in public that pint of beer. “Let me have a small glass of brandy at once,” said Mr. Hart to his servant, having retired to his room immediately after the performance of the feat. His constitution was good, and I may as well at once declare that before half an hour had passed over his head he was again himself, and at his work.
The question of Tappitt’s beer and Tappitt’s brewery was running high in Baslehurst, and had gotten itself involved in the mouths of the people of Baslehurst, not only with the loves and sorrows of poor Rachel Ray, but with the affairs of this election. We know how Tappitt had been driven to declare himself a stanch supporter of the Jew. He had become very stanch—stanch beyond the promising of his own vote—stanch even to a final sitting on the Jew’s committee, and an active canvasser on the Jew’s behalf. His wife, whose passions were less strong than his own and her prudence greater, had remonstrated with him on the matter. “You can vote against Cornbury, if you please,” she had said, “but do it quietly. Keep your toe in your pump and say nothing. Just as we stand at present about the business of Rowan’s, it would almost be better that you shouldn’t vote at all.” But Tappitt was an angry man, at this moment uncontrollable by the laws of prudence, and he went into these election matters heart and soul, to his wife’s great grief. Butler Cornbury, or Mrs. Butler Cornbury—it was all the same to him which—had openly taken up Rowan’s part in the brewery controversy. A rumour had reached Tappitt that the inmates of Cornbury Grange had loudly expressed a desire for good beer! Under such circumstances it was not possible for him not to rush to the fight. He did rush into the thick of it, and boasted among his friends that the Jew was safe. I think he was right—right at any rate as regarded his own peace of mind. Nothing gives a man such spirit for a fight, as the act of fighting. During these election days he was almost regardless of Rowan. He was to second the nomination of the Jew, and so keen was he as to the speech that he would make, and as to the success of what he was doing against Mr. Cornbury, that he was able to talk down his wife, and browbeat Honyman in his own office. Honyman
