Chippinge Borough

by Stanley John Weyman

And Sir Robert could not by any stretch of fancy bring himself to believe that the town would willingly part with this privilege. Why should it strip itself? he argued. It enjoyed the honour vicariously, indeed. But did he not year by year pay the Alderman and eight of the capital burgesses thirty pounds apiece for their interest, a sum which quickly filtered through their pockets and enriched the town, besides taking several of the voters off the rates? Did he not also at election times set the taps running and distribute a moderate largesse among the commonalty, and—and in fact do everything which it behoved a liberal and enlightened patron to do? Nay, had he not, since his accession, raised the status of the voters, long and vulgarly known as “The Cripples,” so that they, who in his father’s time had been, almost without exception, drunken illiterates, were now to the extent of at least one half, men of respectable position?

No, Sir Robert wholly declined to believe that Chippinge had any wish for a change so adverse to its interests. The most he would admit was that there might be some slight disaffection in the place, due to that confounded Bowood, which was for ever sapping and mining and seeking to rob its neighbours.

But even he was presently to be convinced that there was a very odd spirit abroad in this year ’31. The new police and the new steam railways and this cholera of which people were beginning to talk, were not the only new things. There were new ideas in the air; and the birds seemed to carry them. They took possession not only of the troublesome and discontented—poachers whom Sir Robert had gaoled, or the sons of men whom his father had pressed—but of the most unlikely people. Backs that had never been aught but pliant grew stiff. Men who had put up with the old system for more years than they could remember grew restive. Others, who had all their lives stood by while their inferiors ruled the roost, discovered that they had rights. Nay—and this was the strangest thing of all—some who had thriven by the old management and could not hope to gain by a change revolted, after the fashion of Dyas the butcher, and proved the mastery of mind over matter. Not many, indeed, these; martyrs for ideas are rare. But their action went for much, and when later the great mass of the voteless began to move, there were rats in plenty of the kind that desert sinking ships. By that time he was a bold man who in tavern or workshop spoke for the rule of the few, to which Sir Robert fondly believed his borough to be loyal.

His agent had never shared that belief, fortunately for him; or he had had a rude awakening on the first Monday in May. It was customary for the Vermuyden interest to meet the candidates on the Chippenham road, half an hour before the dinner hour, and to attend them in procession through the town to the White Lion. Often this was all that the commonalty saw of an election, and a little horseplay was both expected and allowed. In old days, when the “Cripples” had belonged to the very lowest class, their grotesque appearance in the van of the gentlemanly interest had given rise to many a home-jest. The crowd would follow them, jeering and laughing, and there would be some pushing, and a drunken man or two would fall. But all had passed in good humour; the taps had been running in one interest, the ale was Sir Robert’s, and the crowd envied while they laughed.

White, as he stood on the bridge reviewing the first comers, wished he might have no worse to expect to-day. But he did not hope as much. The town was crowded, and the streets down to the bridge were so cumbered with moving groups that it was plain the procession would have to push its way. For certain, too, many of the people did not belong to Chippinge. With the townsfolk White knew he could deal. He did not believe that there was a Chippinge man who, eye to eye with him, would cast a stone. But here were yokels from Calne and Bowood, who knew not Sir Robert; with Bristol lambs and men as dangerous, and not a few Radicals from a distance, rabid with zeal and overflowing with promises. Made up of such elements the crowd hooted from time to time, and there was a threat in the sound that filled White with misgivings.

Nor was this the worst. The cloth factory stood close to the bridge. The procession must pass it. And the hands employed in it, hostile to a man, were gathered before the doorway, in their aprons and paper caps, waiting to give the show a reception. They had much to say already, their jeers and taunts filling the air; but White had a shrewd suspicion that they had worse missiles in their pockets.

Still, he had secured the attendance of a score of sturdy fellows, sons of Sir Robert’s farmers, and these, with a proportion of the tagrag and bobtail of the town, gave a fairly solid aspect to his party. Nor was the jeering all on one side, though that deep and unpleasant groaning which now and again rolled down the street was wholly Whiggish.

Alas, it was when the agent came to analyse his men that he had most need of the smile that deceives. True, the rector was there and the curate of Eastport, and the clerk and the sexton—the two last-named were voters. And there were also four or five squires arrayed in support of the gentlemanly interest, and as many young bucks come to see the fun. Then there were three other voters: the Alderman, who was a small grocer, and Annibal the basketmaker—these two were stalwarts—and Dewell the barber, also staunch, but a timid man. There was no Dyas, however, Sir Robert’s burliest supporter in old days, and his absence was marked. Nor any Thrush the pig-killer—the jaws of a Radical gaol held him. Nor, last and heaviest blow of all—for it had fallen without warning—was there any Pillinger of the Blue Duck. Pillinger, his wife said, was ill. What was worse he was in the hands of a Radical doctor capable, the agent believed, of hocussing him until the polling was over. The truth about Pillinger—whether he lay ill or whether he lay shamming, whether he was at the mercy of the apothecary or under the thumb of his wife—White could not learn. He hoped to learn it before it was too late. But for the present Pillinger was not here.

The Alderman, Annibal, Dewell, the clerk, the sexton, and Arthur Vaughan. White totted them up again and again and made them six. The Bowood voters he made five—four stalwarts and Dyas the butcher.

Certainly he might still poll Pillinger. But, on the other hand, Mr. Vaughan might arrive too late. White had written to his address in town, and receiving no answer had sent an express to Bristol on the chance that the young gentleman was still there. Probably he would be in time. But when things are so very close—and when there were alarm and defeat in the air—men grow nervous. White smiled as he chatted with the pompous Rector and the country squires, but he was very anxious. He thought of old Sir Robert at Stapylton, and he sweated at the notion of defeat. Cobbett had reached his mind, but Sir Robert had his heart!