“Oh, as to that,” said Sir Philip, “the existence of this belief interests me. If our searcher finds any grounds for it here or in parish registers or elsewhere, I shall of course acknowledge them. But the odds are that the legend springs from a perverted view of the murder of which I have told you, and if that is so, I fear the disclosure will hardly profit you.”
“It won’t,” said Tom gloomily. “But it’ll shut their silly mouths.” If, he reflected, it did not open them in full cry on a new and odious scent.
“So we go on with it?”
“We go on.”
“May I say this, Mr. Bradshaw? That your attitude to this affair increases an admiration of you which was considerable before? If you beat us in this election we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that we are beaten by a man.” Which was handsome, seeing that there was the stuff of libel in the statements of Tom’s well-meaning supporter. Amenities, but Tom did not doubt their sincerity, and his sentiment of personal hatred, already weakened by contact with the Hepplestalls in his Union affairs, merged into his general and tolerantly professional opposition to capitalists.
In the event, what was issued was a statement simply denying, on the authority of a historian, of Sir Philip and of Tom, that the claim made by the Bradshaw family, and repeated during the election, had any foundation whatsoever, and whether the denial had effect or not, it cannot have made much difference to Tom’s candidature. He had a clear two thousand majority over both Liberal and Unionist opponents, and had held the seat ever since, while the legend of the Bradshaws, like any lie that gets a long start of the truth, flourished as impudently as ever. In Bradshaw opinion, Tom Bradshaw had been bought, and they found fresh evidence for this view whenever Tom’s matured attitude toward the Masters’ Federation earned for him the disapproval of extremists. They did not cease to teach their children that if every one had their own, Hepplestall’s was Bradshaws’. “A gang of wastrels,” Sir Philip had called them to Rupert, and could have quoted chapter and verse for his opinion. As he read the history dredged by his searcher, the Bradshaws began with John, a murderer, and ended in a family of beggars; but he excepted Tom. When the Union spoke to him through Tom, there was no bitterness between them; there was a meeting on equal terms between two men who respected each other. Sir Philip recalled the Bradshaws as they figured in his historian’s report, and he recalled the Hepplestalls. “Dying fires,” he thought; Tom Bradshaw was eminently the reasonable negotiator.
Walter Pate crashed out the final chords.
“Aye,” said Tom, “aye. A grand lad, Wagner. And when I hear you play him, it’s a comfort to know I can wipe the floor with you at chess.” Which Mr. Pate accepted as a merited salute to a brilliant performance, and unscrewed the stopper from a bottle of beer. A moment later Tom stared at his friend in blank amazement; he was staggered to see Pate raise the glass to his lips and put it down again.
“Man, are you ill?” he cried. The beer foamed assuringly, but, to be on the safe side, Tom tasted it. “The beer’s fine, what’s to do?”
“Shut up, you slave to alcohol. Shut up and listen.”