Chapter VI: 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—