“Well, I’m dommed!” the other answered, peering up through the darkness. “It be you, Squire, bain’t it? But you’re not meaning it?”
“I am,” Basset replied in a low voice. “I’d not say, vote for him, Bosham. But leave it alone. You’re not called upon to ruin yourself.”
“But ha’ you thought,” the man exclaimed, “that our two votes may make the differ? That they may make you or mar you, Squire!”
“Well, I’d rather be marred than see you put out of your place,” Basset answered. “Think it over, Bosham.”
But Bosham repudiated even thought of it. This vote and his use of it, this defiance of a lord, was, for the time, his very life. “I’ll not do it,” he declared. “I couldn’t do it! Nor I won’t!” he repeated. “We’re freemen o’ Riddsley, and almost the last of the freemen that has votes as freemen! And while free we are, free we’ll be, and vote as we choose, Squire! Vote as we choose! I’d not show my face in the town else! Mr. Stubbs may talk as gallus as he likes—and main ashamed of himself he looked yesterday—he may talk as gallus as never was, we’ll not bend to no landlord, nor to no golden image!”
“Then there’s no more to be said,” Basset answered, feeling that he cut a poor figure. “I don’t wish you to do anything against your conscience, Bosham, and I’m obliged to you and your brother for your staunchness. I only wanted you to know that I should understand if you stayed away.”
“I’d chop my foot off first!” cried the patriot.
After which Basset had no choice but to leave him and to ride on, feeling that he was himself too soft for the business—that he was a round man in a square hole. He wondered what his committee would think of him if they knew, and what Bosham thought of him—who did know. For Bosham seemed to him at this moment a man of principle, a patriot, nay, a very Brutus: whereas, Ben was in truth no better than a small man of large conceit, whose vote was his one road to fame.
CHAPTER XXXI
BEN BOSHAM
It was Tuesday, market-day at Riddsley, and farmers’ wives, cackling as loudly as the poultry they carried, elbowed one another on the brick pavements or clustered before the windows of the low-browed shops. Farmers in white great-coats, with huge handkerchiefs about their necks, streamed from the yards of the Packhorse and the Barley Mow, and meeting a friend planted themselves in the roadway as firmly as if they stood in their own pastures. Now and again a young spark, fancying all eyes upon his four-year-old, sidled through the throng with many a “Whoa!” and “Where be’st going, lad?” While on the steps of the Market-Cross and about the long line of carts that rested on their shafts in the open street, hucksters chaffered and house-wives haggled over the rare egg or the keg of salted butter.