“Suppose it to be stopped on Toosday,” insinuated the satisfied inquirer, with an accent of the utmost cheerfulness, as he lolled against the wainscot, and kept his hands in his pockets, “when there may be more than Master Sundon on the out-look, a score of our fellows, armed with a hazel twig or two, in case their neighbour townsmen be up also, and a little too warm; hey, Mister Torney?”
“Excuse me, Sir John,” stammered the man of law and peace, “I cannot be a party to any sort of outrage, however provoked, or pardonable, or mitigated.”
“Nobody’s asking you, man,” was the contemptuous dismissal; “hold your tongue and shut your ears, that’s all, or worse may come of it.”
There was another pair of ears inquisitive, bewildered, appalled, which, whatever came of it, were not shut, though sometimes they had grown weary within the last few days of the incessant, harsh gabble.
Farmer Huggins was down with rheumatism, and must be wrapped in blankets and brought to the booth in a chair, at the peril of his life.
Butcher Green was trimming, the low rogue, standing out on a presentation to the grammar school for his clever son. What business had butchers with clever sons? or having them, couldn’t the butchers keep their lads to the slaughter-house and the scales, as a better trade, after all, than the beggarly professions without patrons?
Dame Mellish had all the odd voters at her finger ends, in return for her vintner’s custom, bought up in the first place, to be lavished gratis in the second.
Lady Bell had little to do with these unattractive details. Her part in the business of the election was well past, till Mr. Trevor was member, if he should be member. She was overlooked by the gentlemen, because they had no time to spend upon her, and because they had found out for themselves that it did not chime in with Squire Trevor’s humour to have his aristocratic young wife noticed, and it was not for them to thwart the Squire at the present moment.
But there was a fascination to Lady Bell in the very name of Sundon, conjuring up, as it did, the beautiful young woman of the rank and fashion to which Lady Bell was born and bred, more fortunate than Lady Bell, inasmuch as Mrs. Sundon’s sun had not been eclipsed before noon. She had not been sentenced to be the desolate young wife of an old bear of a country Squire, who would tie her down to his bear-garden, and bait her with his cousins—parsons’ wives and daughters. Mrs. Sundon had hope and heart in her youth and beauty as she shared and enjoyed life with her comely and elegant young husband, whose listlessness and haggardness even had a charm, by force of contrast, in Lady Bell’s eyes.
Lady Bell sat with her knotting in the far window, her hand with its shuttle arrested, her scared eyes and ears watching furtively and greedily the club of men by whom her presence was forgotten.