“Not even if the two Mottisfonts sided with Peel?”
“If they did the old gentleman would never see Westminster again,” Stubbs cried, “nor the young one go there!”
“Or,” Audley continued, setting his shoulders against the mantel-shelf, and smiling, “suppose I did? If the Beaudelays interest were cast for repeal? What then?”
“What then?” Stubbs answered. “You’ll pardon me, my lord, if I am frank. Then the Beaudelays influence, that has held the borough time out of mind, that returned two members before ’32, and has returned one since—there’d be an end of it! It would snap like a rotten stick. The truth is we hold the borough while we go with the stream. In fair weather when it is a question of twenty votes one way or the other, we carry it. And you’ve the credit, my lord.”
Audley moved his shoulders restlessly. “It’s all I get by it,” he said. “If I could turn the credit into a snug place of two thousand a year, Stubbs—it would be another thing. Do you know,” he continued, “I’ve often wondered why you feel so strongly on the corn-taxes?”
“You asked me that once before, my lord,” the agent answered slowly. “All that I can say is that more things than one go to it. Perhaps the best answer I can make is that, like your lordship’s influence in the borough, it’s part sentiment and part tradition. I have a picture in my mind—it’s a picture of an old homestead that my grandfather lived in and died in, and that I visited when I was a boy. That would be about the middle nineties; the French war going, corn high, cattle high, a good horse in the gig and old ale for all comers. There was comfort inside and plenty without; comfort in the great kitchen, with its floor as clean as a pink, and greened in squares with bay leaves, its dresser bright with pewter, its mantel with Toby jugs! There was wealth in the stackyard, with the poultry strutting and scratching, and more in the byres knee-deep in straw, and the big barn where they flailed the wheat! And there were men and maids more than on two farms to-day, some in the house, some in thatched cottages with a run on the common and wood for the getting. I remember, as if they were yesterday, hot summer afternoons when there’d be a stillness on the farm and all drowsed together, the bees, and the calves, and the old sheep-dog, and the only sounds that broke the silence were the cluck of a hen, or the clank of pattens on the dairy-floor, while the sun fell hot on the orchard, where a little boy hunted for damsons! That’s what I often see, my lord,” Stubbs continued stoutly. “And may Peel protect me, if I ever raise a finger to set mill and furnace, devil’s dust and slave-grown cotton, in place of that!”
My lord concealed a yawn. “Very interesting, Stubbs,” he said. “Quite a picture! Peace and plenty and old ale! And little Jack Horner sitting in a corner! No, don’t go yet, man. I want you.” He made a sign to Stubbs to sit down, and settling his shoulders more firmly against the mantel-shelf, he thrust his hands deeper into his trouser-pockets. “I’m not easy in my mind about John Audley,” he said. “I’m not sure that he has not found something.”
Stubbs stared. “There’s nothing to find,” he said. “Nothing, my lord! You may be sure of it.”
“He goes there.”
“It’s a craze.”