The quacking of ducks, the neighing of horses, the singsong of rustic voices filled the streets. It was common talk that the place was as full as at the March Fair. The excitement of the Election had gone abroad, the cry that the land was at stake had brought in some, others had come to see what was afoot. Many a stout tenant was here who at other times left the marketing to his womenfolk; and shrewd glances he cast at the gentry, as he edged past the justices who lounged before the Audley Arms and killed in gossip the interval between the Magistrates’ Meeting, at which they had just assisted, and the Ordinary at which they were to support young Mottisfont.
The great men talked loudly and eagerly, were passionate, were in earnest. Occasionally one of the younger of them would step aside to look at a passing hackney, or an older man would speak to a favorite tenant whom he called by his first name. But, for the most part, they clung together, fine upstanding figures, in high-collared riding-coats and top-boots. They were keen to a man; the farmers keen also, but not so keen. For the argument that high wheat meant high rents, and that most of the benefits of protection went to the landlords had got about even in Riddsley. The squires complained that the farmers would only wake up when it was too late!
Still in such a place, and on market-day, four out of five were in the landed interest; four-fifths of the squires, four-fifths of the parsons, almost four-fifths of the tenants; for the laborers, no one asked what they thought of it—they had ten shillings a week and no votes. “Peel—’od rot him!” cried the majority, “might shift as often as his own spinning-jenny! But not they! No Manchester man, and no Tamworth man either, should teach them their business! Who would die if there were no potatoes? It was a flam, a bite, but it wouldn’t bamboozle Stafford farmers!”
Meanwhile Stubbs, moving quietly through the throng, spoke with one here and there. He had the same word for all. “Listen to me, John,” he would say, his hand on the yeoman’s shoulder. “Peel says he’s been wrong all these years and is only right now. Then, if you believe him, he’s a fool; and if you don’t believe him, he’s a knave. Not a very good vet., John, eh? Not the vet. for the old gray mare, eh?”
This had a great effect. John went away and repeated it to himself, and presently grasped the dilemma and chuckled over it. Ten minutes later he imparted it, with the air of a Solomon, to the “Duke,” who mouthed it and liked it and rolled it off to the first he met. It went the round of the inns and about four o’clock a farmer fresh from the “tap” put it to Stubbs and convinced him; and that night men, travelling home market-peart in the charge of their wives, bore it to many a snug homestead set in orchards of hard cider apples.
Had the issue of the Election lain with the Market, indeed, it had been over. But of the hundred and ninety voters no more than fifteen were farmers, and though the main trade of the town sided with them, the two factories were in opposition; and cheap bread had its charms for the lesser fry. But the free traders were too wise to flaunt their views on market-day, and it was left for little Ben Bosham, whose vote was pretty near his all, to distinguish himself in the matter.
He, too, had been at the tap, and about noon his voice was heard issuing from a group who stood near the Audley Arms. “Be I free, or bain’t I?” he bawled. “Answer me that, Mr. Bagenal!”
A knot of farmers had edged him into a corner and were disposed to bait him. A stubby figure in a velveteen coat and drab breeches, his hand on an ash-plant, he held his ground among them, tickled by the attention he excited and fired by his own importance. “Be I free, or bain’t I?” he repeated.
“Free?” Bagenal answered contemptuously. “You be free to make a fool of yourself, Ben! I’m thinking you’d ha’ us all lay down the ground to lazy pasture and live by milk, as you do!”
“Milk?” ejaculated a stout man of many acres, whose contempt for such traffic was above speech.